


Tropisms

by twistedchick



Category: Sports Night, The Sentinel
Genre: Cascade, Comedy of Errors, M/M, Olympics, Pattern Matching, Sentinel/Sports Night crossover, backstage banter, sniffing sheets, weather forecasting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-24
Updated: 2009-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-04 00:39:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 41,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/pseuds/twistedchick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A crossover between Sports Night and The Sentinel, in which Jim Ellison gets close to his idol, Blair is disgruntled, Casey is trying to decide whether to quit sports, Dan is trying to keep it together, Jeremy is an avatar of deity, Natalie has special powers, and Simon gets laid.  Originally published in zine format by Blackfly Presses, Toronto.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tropisms

The unexpected stakeout bored Jim silly. He hadn't minded being called in on his day off. Naomi was visiting, which meant that Blair was busy. Besides, it wasn't as if Ramirez got food poisoning and had to have his partner rush him to the ER all the time. Jim was amazed, though, that Ramirez could fit into his clothes with all the junk he ate. Maybe now the guy would check the Health Department listings before using the first available grease-bucket diner for take-out.

Still, it had only been a six-hour shift, keeping an eye on the house down the street from an apartment window, and Simon was giving him and Blair the next two days off. Jim's throat itched for a drink and a night out to do as he wished. Blair was driving Naomi to the airport after her visit, which had gone well enough considering that she'd found a new all-natural herbal perfume that apparently contained just enough golden sage to make his nose run for the last week. He figured Blair would probably stop off to visit one of his Rainier friends on the way back; he'd said something about getting together with some of the old crowd. Blair needed that, needed to have friends and contacts outside the eremitic world of the Cascade P.D.

Besides, he'd been drinking in bars by himself for a long time, and it wasn't always that bad early in the evening. Or late in the afternoon, which was closer to the truth as it was only about 4:30 or so.

He smiled to himself on the way into The Home Plate. Blair would've been amazed to hear him use 'eremitic' properly. It was fun to see how easily amused Blair could be sometimes.

The early crowd hadn't left work yet. Except for a few people leaning on the vinyl-padded bar, watching the Atlanta-Cincinnati game, Home Plate was fairly empty. He went to the bar to order a German draft -- Home Plate specialized in imported beers and featured foreign sports on the cable channels whenever possible, though a good baseball game often took precedence -- and his elbow joggled the glass on the bar and spilled about half of something in front of a slender, brown-haired man who'd been quietly watching the game.

"Hey, I'm really sorry. Clumsy of me. I'll buy you another one," Jim said, looking for the first time at the man he'd spilled the drink on. He blinked. "Excuse me, but aren't you Casey McCall, from _Sports Night_?"

Casey McCall wiped his hand off on a bar rag and nodded, smiling a little. "Yeah, I'm Casey. Don't worry about the beer." Tired lines that didn't show on television were etched around his mouth.

"No, really, let me buy you one. I owe you one anyway; you always take my side when I argue sports with my roommate." Jim noticed a hesitant look in Casey's eye. "If that's all right with you, of course." If there was one thing Jim knew, it was that sometimes a man didn't want to be disturbed while he was watching a baseball game in a bar.

"No. I mean, no, I'm fine, I'd like another beer." Casey looked him over, a little puzzled. "Do I know your roommate from somewhere? Who is she?"

"He. Blair Sandburg. He rents part of my place. He's always giving me grief about the teams on TV, so I turn to your show, and you always agree with me."

"Glad to be of service." The bartender slid a tankard of something dark and fragrant with a creamy deep head over the bar to Casey, and Jim's nose twitched. "Thanks."

"That's not export Guinness, is it?" Jim asked. "That's the real thing."

"Uh-huh. I asked around, and this is the only place in town that has it."

Jim smiled. "Actually, three local sports bars here get their Guinness flown here straight from the brewery every week. They're owned by a former NFL fullback with Irish connections."

"Pretty powerful Irish connections, if he can get the good stuff by the keg fresh every week."

"Uh-huh." Jim took a closer glance at Casey, noticing the slight bags under his eyes and the small lines of strain at the corners of his mouth. "So, what's _Sports Night_ doing in Cascade?"

"Covering the Quo Vadimus International Track and Field Competition at Ferris Fieldhouse, Rainier University, and the International Special Olympics at the state college." Casey took a sip of Guinness and emerged from the glass with a foam mustache, which he licked off unselfconsciously.

A small shiver skidded down Jim's spine.

Casey continued, "We've got a small crew here for a few days. Good chance to talk with the Olympic hopefuls before they get too famous. And the station owner's nephew is in the Special Olympics." He shrugged, as if it wasn't unusual for a nationally known sports anchor to be sitting in a dark bar watching a rival's televised coverage instead of working the event himself.

"Nobody's too famous to talk to _Sports Night_," Jim said.

He watched Casey take another sip of stout and noticed how the foam on his lip fizzed just a little as he licked it off. Jim watched the bubbles in the foam, and the way they touched Casey's lips, and caught himself wishing he could lick Casey's lip off for him. He pulled his focus back to the television, which was safer, and asked, "Any chance you'll be doing a story on the Jags while you're out here?"

***

Dan Rydell swore under his breath as he rounded the corner and dodged yet another oblivious cappuccino-drinking suit leaving an espresso bar without noticing the sidewalk traffic. Too many espresso bars on this coast, and not enough sports bars. Casey would never go to drink coffee if he were upset.

But it wasn't all Casey's fault. Okay, it was partly Casey's fault for knowing what was going on, and saying so at the wrong time, instead of sitting back and observing the way life paraded before his eyes. No, it was entirely Casey's fault. Casey had seen what was happening, and hadn't told him what he'd seen, and when he did tell him it was too late for discussion and too late for casual good feelings to smooth over the hurt.

Besides, Casey was wrong, entirely wrong. Rebecca Wells, Dan's girlfriend, the woman he loved, wouldn't have gone back to her slimy ex-husband, Steve Sisco. They were divorced, finally, and they'd been divorced for a year. She wouldn't have had anything to do with him. She wouldn't have gone back to him any more than Casey would've gone back to Lisa, his own ex-wife. And that would never happen at all, not even for Casey's dearly loved son, Charlie.

No. Casey had to be wrong. Dan had told him so. Entirely, totally wrong.

And if he didn't find him soon, things would go even more downhill than they already were. Things, in fact, would look far too much like the foot of the St. Moritz-Celerina bobsled run in mid-April, when all the winter's trash under the hard-packed snow started to show as it melted, and the track stayed slippery in the sun, too fast for safety. Only foolhardy novice bobsledders would even consider taking it then, and neither he nor Casey were novices.

Foolhardiness was another matter, not up for discussion. Not at all.

Dan bit his lip and darted into traffic, only to be deafened by the horn of a classic Volvo that skidded to a stop a mere foot away from him. He stood, startled, in the middle of the street, derailed from his train of thought and disconnected from any sense of direction.

"Hey, watch it!" The driver was a man about his own age, with deep blue eyes and shortish curly hair. "You okay, man? I didn't hit you, did I?"

"No. No, I'm fine."

"You don't look it." A blast from a horn behind him made the driver roll his eyes. "You look like someone who's lost and needs a ride."

"Actually, I am. I do," Dan said. "You know any sports bars? I'm trying to find someone."

"Climb in," the driver said. "It's okay. I'm a cop. See?" He flipped a wallet open to show a badge.

"Okay, as long as you're not going to ticket me for jaywalking or something." He went around and climbed into the car. "I'm Dan Rydell."

"Jaywalking's low-level stuff. I don't deal with it." The driver stuck out a hand. "Detective Blair Sandburg, Cascade P.D."

Dan shook it. "Good to meet you."

Detective Sandburg looked to be about Dan's own age, give or take a year or two. He steered the car expertly through the suddenly dense traffic. "You out here for the track and field competition or the Special Olympics?"

"What, you could tell?"

"Your press pass is sticking out of your jacket pocket."

"Oh, yeah. Both, actually."

"Wait a minute. You're Dan Rydell. _Sports Night_ Dan Rydell. Am I right?"

"Good detecting, detective. Guilty as charged."

"I love your show, catch it every chance I can. So, what can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for my co-anchor, Casey McCall. We had some, uh, creative differences during a discussion this afternoon, and I need to find him."

"Uh-huh. So you think he'd be at a sports bar, as opposed to anywhere else?"

"Most likely place. How many of them do you have in Cascade?"

"A lot." Blair Sandburg tossed him a smile. "I've been in all of them. Maybe we can eliminate a few. Does he have any preferences?"

"Preferences?"

"Some bars specialize in certain sports. Or foods. Was he driving, or on foot?"

"On foot, I think. We've been taking taxis. He could've taken a taxi, though."

"True. Hey, don't worry. We'll find him."

They went a few blocks but had to stop for a light.

"Can I call you Blair or does it have to be Detective Sandburg?"

"Blair's fine. I'm easy."

He did look pretty relaxed for a cop. Dan decided to ask. "If you don't deal with jaywalkers and low-level stuff, what do you deal with?"

Without any sign of insincerity, Blair replied, "International terrorists, white supremacist militias, escaped convicts, renegade CIA agents, beautiful assassins -- "

"Any mad scientists?"

"Not lately, but the evening is young."

***

"Atlanta vs. Cincinnati is boring."

"You should know."

"I do know. It's boring. We're in a bar with genuine Irish Guinness, not that molasses-like export stuff. We should be watching hurling, or soccer."

"There's another place near here, Crosby's, that has better food. You look hungry."

"I think I had a sandwich at lunchtime, whenever that was."

"Don't they feed you guys when you're working?"

"Sure. There's a buffet, but the CNBC and ESPN crowds went through like locusts while we were doing color coverage and features off to the side, and there wasn't much left afterward." Casey finished the tankard of stout and licked off the foam; the little flick of his tongue had become routine to him. "Does Cascade have any local specialty foods? Something I might not get to try in New York?"

"Well, there's a few," Jim admitted. "Lots of seafood, of course. Crabs, but you get them back east."

"They're more a Maryland thing than a New York one."

"Uh-huh. Well, there's the coffee."

"I wasn't thinking of coffee. Though, the coffee out here is excellent. Very fresh."

"Yeah; I get coffee on the street to take to work because the stuff we have is so awful."

They nodded simultaneously in agreement on the dismal quality of office coffee. Jim finished his second beer and contemplated the ring of moisture on the coaster.

"Murphy's has Rainier stew, and chocolate avalanche for dessert," Jim offered. "It's not a sports bar, but I know the owner and I can ask him to change the channel if the Atlanta-Cincinnati game is still on."

"That sounds really good. What's in a chocolate avalanche? Do I want to know? Actually, I don't, as long as it tastes good with Rainier stew. What's in Rainier stew?"

"A lot of wild game, whatever's available. Smoked fish, salmon, potatoes. It's a bit like finnan haddie, I'm told," Jim said. He'd taken Naomi and Blair there two nights ago, and that was how Naomi had described the dish. She'd promised to make finnan haddie for Jim the next time she was in town, as an alternative to boiled tongue, Blair's favorite.

"Lead me to it. I could eat a moose," Casey said. He stood, and Jim realized as he looked into Casey's hazel brown eyes that they were exactly the same height.

Casey paused, just for a second, as he looked back at Jim, as if sizing him up, and Jim felt a flash of worry that he might not have passed the grade. Then Casey gave him a blindingly sweet smile, and Jim's worries vanished.

It had been a long time since he'd had that happen, and an even longer one since he'd thought about doing more than dinner with a man. But anything might be possible, given the right situation and the right man.

***

"Hey, Barney."

"Hi, Blair. Where's your partner?"

"Haven't seen him. We're looking for -- how would you describe Casey McCall, Dan?"

"The Casey McCall? From _Sports Night_?"

"Yes."

"Haven't seen him. Wait a minute, you're The Dan Rydell, aren't you? Would you sign this bar mat for my brother?"

After the fourth nearly identical response in the fourth bar, Dan was getting frustrated.

"The hell with it. Let's take a break, get some food, and look later. If that's all right with you, that is."

"I'm down with that," Blair said. "Long day. Just put my mother on the plane to Buenos Aires, and I think I need a break." They headed back to the Volvo.

"Buenos Aires? Your mother's from Argentina?"

"No, she has a friend there that she was going to visit. She travels a lot." Blair turned toward Dan from the driver's seat. "What are you hungry for?"

"Would you believe me if I said something that doesn't come from a sports bar?"

"Oh, yeah. Let's see." He turned on the engine. "In this part of town there's good Italian -- "

"Hmm. Not tonight."

"Thai, Korean and Chinese -- "

"Not really up for chopsticks."

"There's the usual burgerish places -- "

Dan wrinkled his nose.

"-- and there's sushi."

"That's it. Sushi."

"I thought you weren't up for chopsticks."

"Not for serious chopstick action, no. But I could deal with sushi. You can pick it up with your fingers in public without being rude, unlike kung pao chicken or kim chi."

"Sushi it is." Blair spun the car in a U-turn and in fifteen minutes they were seated at a sushi bar, looking over the slabs of fish that the sushi chefs were slicing. Blair ordered a regular sushi plate with an extra order of salmon-skin rolls. Dan, after considering and rejecting the roll combo and the oversized futomaki, went for the evening special, a sort of choose-it- yourself plate where he could experiment with one piece each of a few things if he wanted. They ordered a medium sake to split, and water.

"This is great, Blair. Thanks." Dan looked around the room. "This is where I needed to go."

"No problem." Blair sipped his sake. "So. It's none of my business, but what kind of creative differences do you get in television sports coverage?"

Dan watched the chef's fingers and the sharp knife, marveling that they didn't come into contact as the chef sliced a chunk of mackerel.

"Creative differences? Well, we write our own copy, so there's always room for comment on that, and the order in which stories are broadcast is very important." He glanced at Blair, and saw sympathy in a pair of deep blue eyes, and a kind face. This man's a cop, he told himself; his job is to help solve problems between people. He decided to stop hedging. "Casey said some things about the woman I love that I didn't appreciate."

"He doesn't like her?"

"He doesn't really know her. They've met a few times. It's not like we double-date or anything."

Blair toyed with a salmon-skin roll, dipping it in soy-wasabi sauce. "And?" He popped the roll in his mouth.

"We all work in the same building. She does market analysis for CSC, downstairs. _Sports Night_ is separate from that, so it's not as if we see one another in the hall casually all the time."

"Okay. Let me get this straight. Casey's not likely to run into this woman, but he found out something and said it to you, and you didn't like it?" Blair asked. Dan nodded, his eyes sad. "And he got so upset that he walked out? You didn't walk out?"

"He was done for the day and I still had a little to do, so he left. I couldn't leave; I still had to meet with Jeremy to check on background for some of the athletes." Dan reached forward and took the tray of sushi that the chef was handing him. "I figured he'd walk around for half an hour and come back; he's done that before. But he didn't."

"You've got to know him pretty well by now," Blair said, accepting his own tray of sushi. "How long have you two been friends? You've been at _Sports Night_ for more than four years, and you were at that Texas show before that, right?"

"We met a long time ago. It's closer to twelve or thirteen by now."

"You get to know a lot about each other in that kind of time." Blair took another sip of sake; some of the sticky rice hadn't stuck to the other rice as well as it had tried to stick to the inside of his throat. "Jim and I have worked together for nearly six years now, and let me tell you, I've gotten to where I know what he'll say or do almost before he does it. Except sometimes. Every once in a while he'll do something I just don't believe is possible, and it floors me." He leaned toward Dan, who looked a little confused. "In theory, everyone can do anything, right? Well, it's not true. Some people draw the lines around their lives a lot tighter than others. Jim's like that; and when he steps over one of his lines it shocks the hell out of me."

"That's just it!" Dan nodded emphatically. He finished eating a piece of freshwater eel and turned in his chair, swiveling toward Blair. "A while ago, Dana, our executive producer, was engaged to someone who really didn't appreciate her, a lawyer named Gordon. Casey found out Gordon was sleeping with Sally, the executive producer of West Coast Update, and he faced Gordon with it but he never said anything to Sally or Dana. He told me he wanted to take the high road with it, that it was the manly thing to do, even though he was half in love with Dana himself."

Blair sorted this out. "How did he know about Gordon?"

"Casey caught Gordon wearing his shirt, the one he'd left at Sally's."

"Aha." Blair split the last of the sake between their two little cups and signaled the waitress for another. There were several other bars around that could be checked out on foot before he'd have to drive again.

"With Dana he takes the high road. With me, he doesn't. I admit he's known her longer than I have, but it bites, Blair." Dan's eyes burned. "It really bites."

"I hear you." The sake arrived, and the cups were refilled. "Yeah. You know, Jim used to check out my dates on the FBI and Interpol lists, and it would get me so mad. He should've checked out a few of his own; he has terrible taste in women."

"How so?" Dan signaled the sushi chef to make him another little matched set of mackerel sushi; it had an appealing taste. He liked it much better than the flying fish egg roll, which had the texture of slightly rubbery sand.

"Well, he's divorced, to start with. Carolyn's a good person, but they're way too much alike; apparently things fell apart within two years or so. I wasn't around then; I met her later, and she's a classy lady, but definitely not someone Jim should have been with."

"And?"

"I don't know if he's trying to find someone like Carolyn, or someone to fit this checklist he's got in his head, but every woman he falls in love with has three things in common: she has long, beautiful legs, she's intelligent, and she's bad for him."

"That's four things, if you sort out the adjectives. Long legs implies tallness."

"Okay, four things. He always falls for someone who's living undercover, or an assassin, or a professional thief -- exactly the wrong people for him, but it happens every time. Oh, he'll go out with other women but it's all casual, never goes any further."

Blair looked miserable as he said this, and Dan sympathized. He knew firsthand about feeling overlooked and underappreciated by someone he cared about. "So you've been a cop with him for a few years, and you've seen all this. It can't be easy."

"It wasn't. Actually, I was a consultant to the department for most of that time, but I was working with him every day so we were partners long before I went to the Academy." Blair finished his last piece of smoked salmon and pushed his dish away so he could lean both elbows on the table. "So, what did Casey say about the woman you love?"

"He said Rebecca had gone back with her ex-husband again, and that she was pregnant."

"Whoa. Oh, man, that's rough." Blair shook his head at the thought. "How did he know?"

"He heard them talking just before he got into the elevator. It was probably on the main floor; he's got no reason to go down to see anyone in CSC's market research group. She said something about how some test came out, and they were holding hands. He said."

"What kind of test?"

"Something to do with pregnancy. Casey's got a son, Charlie; he went through all of this with his ex-wife, so he knows about it."

"How long have you been seeing Rebecca?"

"More than a year now, since her divorce."

"Uh-huh. And I don't suppose you've talked with her."

"Not since we flew out here, no. We've been pretty busy, and with the time difference I can't get her on the phone anyway."

Blair nodded. "Let's go check some more sports bars. Did you call the hotel? Which hotel is it?"

"The Raleigh. No answer."

"We can swing by there before we leave this area; it's only a couple of blocks away."

***

Casey's eyes rolled upward in what appeared to be religious ecstasy, and he licked the fork carefully, attentively.

"You're right. I don't want to know what's in the chocolate avalanche."

"But you like it?"

"It's wonderful. And it goes perfectly with the Rainier stew. Any idea what was in it today?"

Jim thought a moment about the combination of flavors. "Just a guess, but probably venison, rabbit, a little pheasant, smoked salmon and halibut. I might have missed something, though."

"It's really wonderful. Thanks for bringing me here."

"I'm glad you like it. If it's not intruding --"

"What?"

"Is your co-anchor out here too? My roommate would love to meet him." Jim watched the expressions that flickered across Casey's face, and bit his tongue. "Not if it's a problem. Forget I said it."

"No, it's okay. It's just," Casey pushed away his plate, "it's just that Dan and I had some, um, differences of opinion today, and he's probably still in a bad mood. But we could do it tomorrow. Things should be better by then."

"Tomorrow?"

"Yes. Would you like to come out tomorrow and spend the day with me, as a guest of Quo Vadimus, CSC and _Sports Night_? Your roommate too, if you want."

"That'd be great. Are you sure? I don't want to get in the way."

"You won't be in the way." Casey checked his watch; almost 8 p.m. "You know, _Sports Night_'s coming on back in my suite; want to come watch it with me, get the inside commentary?"

"Are you kidding?" Jim felt as if he could walk on the sky.

***

Casey wasn't at the hotel, but the suite showed signs of his recent presence: a pair of good trousers were folded over the back of a chair in his room, and a crumpled but elegant shirt lay on the floor.

Dan shook his head. "We don't have wardrobe with us this time, just Alison, who does makeup. He's going to have to have the hotel launder it tomorrow."

"I think I know why you can't reach him." Blair picked up a cell phone from the credenza. Dan sighed.

"Not surprising. He'll go to any lengths necessary to not communicate." He frowned. "I said that right, didn't I? Or was it any length necessary not to communicate? Or not necessarily communicate?"

"Same thing, either way." Blair shrugged. "Well, it's only about 7:30, and you're a guest in my town. You want to go out somewhere?"

"Sure. Better than waiting around here," Dan said. He shook his head as he closed the door. "You'd think that someone who's a news anchor would be better at communications."

"You know, I wouldn't. People aren't always good in their non-work lives at what they work at," Blair said. "You two talk for a living. You can't talk all the time when you're out of the studio."

"You could be right," Dan admitted. "So, tell me where some of the hot spots are in Cascade, and we'll go check them out."

***

The second string at _Sports Night_ didn't do too bad a job, Casey decided. They were nowhere near as talented at writing as he and Dan were, but they didn't totally suck. A little alliteration, a few plays on words that didn't descend to the depth of puns, a couple of literary and historical references that weren't so shabby. He decided he'd approve of it.

Half the fun, of course, lay in explaining to Jim how the show was produced, and what to notice to see how well it was doing. There were a few glitches -- one graphic didn't make it onscreen for two seconds, and a stringer out on location in Tampa Bay was hard to hear, so the fill-in anchors had to vamp until the sound levels were adjusted -- but those weren't nearly as bad as what could have happened. Hell, they weren't nearly as bad as things that had happened with himself and Dan. Neither one of them had asked the other onscreen why they were there in the first place, no dripping half-frozen turkeys fell from the lighting grid, and the stage-right anchor chair did not slowly subside under the weight of its occupant.

And Jim was a good audience.

He wasn't another sportscaster, so the somewhat incestuous professional rivalry was absent from the evening. However, he did have a really good grasp of sports, a deep knowledge of basketball and baseball and football, and enough of an understanding of gamesmanship to be able to discuss any other sports mentioned on the show. That put him way above most of the actual dates Casey had ever had -- except for Dana, who knew all about sports and whom he'd never actually managed to date -- and a good long way above most guys in bars as well.

Although, when he thought about it Casey realized that Jim didn't really say that much. Instead, he said a little and nodded intelligently. Casey decided that he approved of this. Even Dan could learn something about intelligent nodding from this man, and Dan was already good at it.

Casey found himself talking with his hands during the thirties and forties, as he sat next to Jim on the couch. He felt tipsy from the several beers he'd had before dinner, and with dinner, but still in command of himself and his extremities. But by the fifties, when Bobbie Bernstein was talking with a major-league coach about how his new spring-training techniques had changed his team's chances for the pennant, Casey felt his mast listing to windward.

Or Jim-ward.

His hand came down, not on the couch, but on Jim's thigh. It felt solid, well-muscled, warm, and it took a moment for him to realize that Jim's slacks weren't the same material as the couch cushions. And in that moment, Jim leaned toward him and kissed him gently on the mouth.

It felt so good.

Oh, it felt good, and it had been so long....

Jim leaned back and waited. "No harm, no foul," he said softly. "Up to you, entirely."

For the first time in his life, Casey lost all interest in his own television show. "Yes." He kissed Jim back, and his hand moved a little higher until Jim's hand covered it and moved it a little further, to rest over something hot and solid and pulsing. "My room's in there."

He stumbled a little, getting up, and dislodged the couch cushions, but Jim caught him in strong arms. It was amazing how strong he was. Casey resolved to ask him, later on, what it was that he did for a living. Maybe he'd already asked this, but he didn't remember the answer. It didn't matter right now, anyway.

They left Bobbie Bernstein talking cheerfully about jai-alai to an empty, disheveled couch.

***

"She can't be going back to that idiot."

"You're brooding again."

"Sorry. Really. But she couldn't. It's just impossible for her to be that obtuse."

"People are strange, my friend," Blair said. "Let it go for tonight. There isn't anything you can do about it right now, is there?"

They were sitting in the third sports bar in as many hours, none of them ones they'd visited before. This one served good British pub food and British lagers, ales and stouts, and Blair had chosen it because he'd realized he was far too hungry to keep going without more food than the sushi appetizers they'd had earlier, and because he suspected that Dan would be likely to go on several hours longer without noticing how hungry he was until he fell over. Dan had gone through a shepherd's pie while he'd munched down on fish and chips; they'd watched some of the televised coverage of a Barcelona soccer game while Dan had explained his theories of how the game would be much improved by eliminating the goalies and making the goals smaller, like a kicked version of basketball.

But now he was back to Rebecca again.

Blair braced himself. This was, he told himself firmly, someone who really needed him to listen now, regardless of how futile the conversation became.

Dan pushed away his empty tureen, wrapped his long fingers around his glass, and said, "Yes, there is. We can examine the evidence. That's what you do as a detective, right? Examine the evidence?"

Blair nodded judiciously. "That's what we do. All right. Let's examine the evidence Casey gave you. Keep in mind, though, that it's indirect evidence. Rhetorical. Hearsay."

"Because I didn't see it."

"Because you didn't see it. All we have is what Casey said he saw, and other people's observations sometimes tend to be colored by their emotions."

Dan snorted. "No kidding. All right."

"Let's start with the location, set the scene."

"The CSC building. Ground floor, I'd guess. There's no reason for Casey to be on any other floor besides the studio. It's your basic big glass building with elevators in the middle."

"Are the elevators glass?"

"No."

"So the doors have to be open for you to see someone in the elevator, right?"

"Good point."

"Thanks." Blair waved down the waitress and asked her for two more draft ales. "Go on."

"He said the doors opened, and he saw her holding hands with Steve Sisco, her ex-husband."

"Was it an amicable divorce?"

"No way. He's an idiot. He abused her emotionally during the marriage. He's a jerk. He's -- "

"I get the picture. Holding hands would be unlikely to happen spontaneously with him, right?"

"Or with her. Don't get me wrong," Dan held up a hand, "she has her passions but she's, oh, contained. She bottles it up at work. She's never even, oh, thank you," he said to the waitress as he accepted his second ale, "she's never even held hands with me while we've been in the building. Well, maybe once. But she's very conscious of public displays of affection."

"Uh-huh." Blair took a sip. "There's no chance Casey could have mistaken the man she was holding hands with for someone else, is there? Her brother from out of town? An old college friend?"

Dan shook his head. "Casey and I worked with Steve Sisco, years ago. He was a fuck-up then, and he hasn't changed except to add a few pounds to his ego."

"No chance of misidentification. Well, it was a thought."

"It was a good thought. Thanks for thinking it, even if it didn't work."

"You're welcome."

"Now, here's the part I have trouble with. Casey heard her saying something about the tests coming out positive, and the due date. If it were any other kind of test, why would the due date be seven and a half months away?"

"Good question. Normally, when something comes up with a medical test, they don't wait that long to do things."

"Right."

"Did Casey say if Rebecca noticed he was there?"

"He didn't say."

"So she wouldn't have been doing something like this to mess with his head and thus with your head."

"No. She knows Casey but they're not really friends."

"What time does she get off work?"

Dan checked his watch. "About now, considering the time change."

"Call her. You've got your phone."

"I think I will. Excuse me." Dan slid out of the booth and headed toward the hallway at the back where the men's room and phones were, his cell phone in hand.

It took a while. The bartender had switched the television to show _Sports Night_, and Blair sipped his ale while watching a good-looking woman named Bobbie Bernstein and a man whose name he didn't catch talk about soccer scores, horse racing, jai-alai, and the prospect of recreating Aztec football in Mexico. Someone had actually found rules for the game, and a few people were testing it. Of course, in the modern version the losing team would not be sacrificed to the gods on a bloody altar, no matter what the fans wanted, which was undoubtedly a good thing considering the peaceable and nonviolent nature of international soccer fandom. But it might be interesting to see if the game could be recreated.

When Dan came back, his eyes looked red and swollen and his mouth seemed to move into painful shapes.

"It's true. She was waiting until I came back to tell me."

"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry, Dan."

"It happened on her business trip. She was in Geneva, or Paris, or Madrid. Maybe Barcelona." Dan caught sight of Bobbie Bernstein on the television over the bar. "God, I hope it wasn't Barcelona. Bad things always happen to me when Spain's involved."

"Never mind that." Blair put a hand on his arm. "What is she going to do? What are you going to do?"

"She's not going back to him. She's going to have the baby on her own. And she's leaving me, because she doesn't want me to have to keep seeing her when she'd gone back to him, even though it was just for four days in Spain."

Dan stared at his hands for a long time, while Blair kept his peace and wished, so hard, for some sort of happy ending for the man.

"And?" he said quietly, after a long space.

"And I'm going to let her go," Dan whispered. "I can't keep going through this. I love her, but I'm letting her go." He raised his eyes to the television. "Nothing good ever comes out of Spain for me. Not ever."

Blair let the silence rest between them for a while. He wished Naomi could have been there, with her ability to be nonjudgmental and sympathetic, and her clear-sighted wisdom with its New Age skew. She'd have been able to listen as Dan Rydell poured his heart out into her hands, and to find a way to help him put it back together gently. He himself felt clumsy as hell with this kind of thing regardless of how good others thought he was. Maybe it was the result of having had too many difficult relationships and bad breakups of his own in the past few years, but he knew that this one was hitting Dan the way Maya's leaving, and return, and final departure, had hit him. Very little that he'd ever experienced had felt worse than that. The fountain. The dissertation mess. That was all. Even being shot had felt better.

Finally he said, slowly, "It gets easier, after a while. I know that's not much help now."

"I know."

"It's hard to watch someone leave you more than once."

Dan raised his head to look at Blair. "Where did yours go?"

"Back to South America. She was deported. It's a long story."

"Deported? That's rough."

"Yeah. Her family's involved in this cartel, and she got mixed up in things. It wasn't good."

"How long ago?"

"A few years. It still hurts to think of her, but I'm not hurting all the time."

"That's good. Did you find anyone since then?"

"Oh, yeah, a couple of times. And then I fell in love, hard, with someone who wasn't that interested and wanted to just remain a friend. So what could I do?" Blair shrugged, his hands out. "We're friends. We see each other all the time, as friends. We even work together."

"Man, that sucks soccer balls." Dan drained his glass. "I don't want another beer. How about if you show me around Rainier University, so I can get a better idea where things will be happening there tomorrow? You do know the place, right?"

"Like the back of my eyelids. I did my undergrad and grad work there."

"I'm in the hands of a master. Lead on." Dan called for the check, and pushed away Blair's protest. "Look, whatever a second-place news anchor makes in New York has to be more than a detective makes in Cascade, and I'm on an expense account for this trip. Okay?"

"Okay. But I'm paying, next time."

"No problem."

***

The first time started with slow, sweet exploration with bursts of pleasure as sensitive spots were found and touched. It seemed as if Jim might be sensitive everywhere, but after a particularly ticklish moment when he had to tell Casey to back off so he could catch his breath, Jim's nerves seemed to calm down and things went well.

Very well.

The bigger man tasted salty, and his hair was soft as silk over those muscles. He moaned as Casey lipped his nipples, and stretched his hands up to grip the head of the bed, his muscles flexing as he vibrated under Casey's tongue. Casey could feel the vibrations all the way down his body as he lay on Jim.

Oh, it was hot.

He pulled himself up from Jim, and studied him a moment.

"If that's a question, the answer is yes."

"What was I asking?" Casey asked.

"Doesn't matter. And yes, I'm clean, if that's the question."

"One of them. So am I, but we've got supplies in the bedside table."

Jim flashed him a heart-stopping grin. "I like a man who's prepared."

"That's one thing we learn early in the news business."

Jim let go of the headboard and pulled Casey down for a slow, deep kiss that turned fiery as his hands strayed down Casey's back and over his ass and pulled him in tight to himself. Casey gasped as their cocks rubbed against each other.

"Top or bottom?" Jim asked him.

"Your choice, then we switch."

"Sounds good to me." Jim reached for the bedside table. "You go first."

It had been a while for Casey; it was a good thing he was going first. He knelt on his heels as Jim leaned forward to lick him, nuzzle him and slurp him into Washington Monument hardness before tenderly sliding a condom onto him. Jim rolled onto his stomach and came up on hands and knees, his own cock heavy under him. "Ready whenever you are."

Casey glided a fingertip around and into Jim's anus, and the moaning almost convinced him. He withdrew his finger and lubricated it before putting it back in again.

"Come on, Casey," Jim said, his voice more than an octave deeper than before. "Please."

Casey lined up, pressed down slowly, bracing himself with his hands on Jim's taut flanks as he slid ever so slowly home, full length anchored in the heat and pressure. So hot. His hand moved around to wrap long fingers around Jim's cock, and Jim's head came up and he gasped and started to move under Casey as Casey started to plunge inside him.

It was like wrestling with a volcano, hot and fierce and untamed. Jim nearly bucked him off, and he leaned over Jim's back as if they were wrestlers, holding on, though no official out-in-the- open wrestling match he'd ever seen had included anything like this. Certainly, the starting position for the up wrestler in American freestyle didn't include pumping the down wrestler's cock. Jim growled and roared and Casey smacked his ass and reared back and let him have it with everything he could give him, powered by the muscles in his back and legs and hips and Jim took it all and gave it back and the steady pressure of magma and lava grew overwhelming, immediate, unstoppable as the top blew off everything.

Jim's knees collapsed, and he and Casey fell to the bed, still linked, wet and tingling. When he slid out, a few minutes later, and flopped next to Jim, he felt Jim's hands drawing him in for a long, sweet kiss.

"You're good," Casey told him. "You that good at everything you do?"

"I try." Jim's lips had a funny quirk, not the same as Dan's, but he'd never seen Dan in this situation. His mind flashed like lightning, showing him the times he'd seen Dan naked, in a locker room or swimming, and he felt a tingle along his spine as if he'd been touched, lightly, by Dan's long fingers. Jim's hands were broader, the fingers stronger than Dan's, and they weren't on his back.

"God." His hand slid down over Jim's arm, his shoulder, his belly, and he noticed the white lines of old scars, and the heavier pinkish-red of ones not so long healed. "What happened to you? Were you in an accident?"

"Some people might call it that. I was in the Rangers for a long time."

"The Rangers." Casey had to think a minute; it had been a long day. "You mean the military, not the baseball team or the hockey team, right? You look like a hockey player."

"The only hockey I played was in the park when I was growing up. I was in the Army." Jim drew a breath. "It got a bit wearing at times."

"I can imagine."

"Don't. You don't want the nightmares."

"So, that's where the muscles came from."

"I like to stay in shape, since I got out, so I work out a couple of times a week." His hands were combing through Casey's hair, slipping down Casey's side to draw lines on his abdomen and back in an alphabet that wasn't part of any of the languages Casey spoke. He didn't need a translator. "We should clean up a bit; you'll have to sleep in this bed."

"Not if you stay. Then *we'd* have to sleep in it, and it would be better."

"No argument. I didn't have anything to go home to anyway; my roommate's probably out for the night."

"Yeah." They got up, took a fast warm shower together, soaping each other and playing, used several of the hotel's thick, lush bath towels, and went back to bed to play more.

***

"So, this is Rainier by night. Not bad. What departments are good here?"

"Mostly the sciences. It's got world-class anthropology, pre-med and biology, and above average English and history departments. Pretty good foreign language programs as well, but not comparable to the Ivy League. Where did you go?"

"Dartmouth. I did all right, but I was always more interested in sports."

"Hence your eventual career path."

"Yeah. Things change, you know. When I went into college, I really wanted to be a historian."

"I know about that. If anyone had told me then that I'd be a cop, I'd have asked what they'd been smoking."

"You like detective work, don't you?"

"Oh, yeah. It has its ups and downs, of course." Blair hesitated just a moment as they passed the stone fountain in front of Hargrove Hall. The past was past. He was alive. He breathed in the damp cool evening air and rejoiced that he could do it without the painful hacking cough he'd had for so long after he'd drowned. He'd pulled a rib, coughing hard, following Jim to Mexico and Yucatan and back. "On the good days, it's probably a bit like what you do -- a lot of information gathering, piecing things together, figuring out what happened and how and sometimes even why. And we get to help people, a lot more than what you might think. It's not all putting away thugs."

"You must work with good people."

"The best. Absolutely the best, at least in my squad. There's always a few around, out in the rest of the department, that aren't as good, but really not that many and I don't have to deal with them most of the time."

"Same here." Dan paused to think. "_Sports Night_ is like what family is supposed to be."

They were almost past Hargrove now, so he could start breathing normally again and not avoid looking at one entire section of his visual field. He realized how stiffly he had been walking when he started to relax.

"You had some bad things happen while you were here, didn't you?" Dan asked softly. "I know what it feels like, more or less. My kid brother," he faltered but went on almost steadily, "died in a car accident the day I left for Dartmouth."

"Oh, man, you do know." Blair closed his eyes, opened them again, shook his head slightly but kept walking. "That fountain back there? A crazy woman with a gun pushed me into it and drowned me. I died. The EMTs gave up, I'm told. My partner refused to believe them and brought me back to life."

They saw a security guard in the distance, approaching them, but Blair waved and the guard waved back and let them pass.

"Blair," Dan said after a while, "there aren't words for how I feel about that."

"Thanks."

"If I can ask, what was it like?"

"Seriously?" Blair asked. Dan nodded, his eyes huge and dark in his pale face. "Drowning sucks, bigtime. Then it was a lot like some mythological event, really hard to describe. And then I had to get over pneumonia." He gave Dan a practiced grin, the one that said he'd gone past all this, whether it was true or not. "I'd rather not have to do that again for a long time."

"Oh, yeah. The woman who did it ... "

"Yeah?"

"Was she good looking?"

"Oh, yeah. Big blue eyes, blonde hair, athletic figure -- and a total psychopath. She's in a mental hospital now, where she stares at the walls and chants something about the trees in the forest talking to her."

"Not someone I'd want to run into." Dan shook his head. "I've got enough trouble as it is, what with Dana and Sally and Natalie."

"Dana and Sally and Natalie?"

"Yep. And that's not even counting Rebecca. I'm not talking about Rebecca any more."

"Okay. No more Rebecca. So what's with Dana and Sally and Natalie?"

They'd reached Ferris Fieldhouse, and the track surrounding the soccer field, and Dan sat down on a convenient bleacher. "Dana, who used to have this thing for Casey but screwed it up so badly, is interested in Calvin. Calvin owns CSC itself, as well as Quo Vadimus. I'd be willing to bet that he bought CSC so she'd still have a job, back when the network was on the block. But she's so hyper about not screwing it up this time that she'll probably screw it up -- and drive us all crazy in the meantime. That's one reason I didn't object when Calvin wanted us to come out here; it got me away from Dana for a few days."

"Fair enough." Blair sat next to him, watching the play of the distant lights on the planes of his face. "I think you mentioned Sally before? Or was that someone else?"

"Sally. Big, beautiful Sally." Dan sighed. "In the absence of anyone else, Mount Sally is hoping Casey will do a bit of free-climbing again, which he doesn't need. I could make a guess at why, but I won't; I'm going to take the high road on that. And Natalie is engaged to Jeremy, who's out here with us to do background, and to keep an eye on Sally."

"I think I'm confused."

"Dana got territorial. She sent Sally out here to produce the show on site, and Jeremy to make certain it all got done the way she wanted it, because she has issues with trust when it comes to Casey and Sally. Me, she trusts, for no really good reason except that I've never slept with her."

"And Jeremy has?"

Dan's face cracked into a wide smile. "Oh, no. Jeremy belongs to Natalie; she had her branding iron out the minute he walked across the threshold of CSC, and he didn't struggle that much. If he even looked at Sally like that, Natalie would get out the dynamite and blow her off the face of the earth."

"You know, that almost made sense."

"I'm glad." Dan gave Blair a sidelong glance, the kind he often gave Casey just before they went on the air. "You and your partner must be pretty close, what with him bringing you back like that."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Blair's tone wasn't quite bitter, but it wasn't sweet. "We're friends, good friends, but ..." his voice drifted off.

"You wanted it to be more?"

"Yes." Blair's eyes looked pale in the slanting light. "I asked, but he never really gave me an answer, just a lot of excuses. That's not the way he usually does things, but he represses a lot. I didn't want to push too hard. We've gone through too much before." Blair winced, looking so unhappy that Dan patted him on the shoulder and left his hand there. "That's an answer in itself, I realize. Thanks."

"No problem. Been there once or twice myself." Dan gave him one more pat.

The blue-white security light from the top of the bleachers made Blair's eyes look deeper and his hair darker. He didn't look like Dan's idea of a cop, except for the unhappy lines around his mouth. Blair looked like something mythological himself, as if he might change into another creature who could breathe underwater without any problem.

Blair sighed, and shrugged, and turned back into a human. "Maybe it's just as well; cops don't generally have a lot of time for a private life, and if we did anything and it got out, we might be split up as a partnership at work."

"And that would be bad."

"Very bad. Jim has these, um, physical difficulties; it's not officially a disability, but I help him get past the problems. He works a lot better when I'm around, and I do better with him around. We've worked with others for short periods -- everyone in Major Crime works with everyone else on some case or other -- but staying partners with him has always worked best, even when we had rough times."

"Yeah. It's that way with Casey and me, too. As partners, I mean. He even gave up Conan's show to work with me, but I can count on one hand the number of times he's ever said anything about how he feels, and still have fingers left over."

"I kind of figured." Blair shook his head. "Some people are doers, not talkers."

Dan yawned. "I think I'm just about ready to call it a night, regardless of where Casey has gone. Could you take me back to the hotel?"

"No problem."

***

"Here we are," Dan said, opening the door to the suite.

"Nice," Blair said, noticing the thick cream rug, the armoire, and the velveteen couch. The cushions looked as if whoever had been sitting on them had gotten up too fast and perhaps tripped. The television, in its carved wooden cabinet, was still on CSC, playing to the empty room.

A choking noise came from the right-hand bedroom. Dan shook his head. "Casey never could hold his liquor when he's upset." He picked up a small metal trash can and headed quickly toward the bedroom, whose door was tipped mostly closed -- but the moment he pushed the door open he stopped dead in his tracks. Blair, who had followed him, stopped just as suddenly, staring past Dan.

Casey McCall wasn't ill, or unhappy. In fact, he looked as if he couldn't be happier. He lay on his back on the king-sized bed, with his long legs in the air and his ankles twined together behind Jim Ellison's neck, and his hands gripping Jim's shoulders, and his mouth kissing Jim as he groaned, and his tight athletic ass impaled on Jim's long, thick cock. They were coming, together, out of control on the groaning bed. Jim was pumping hard, fast and deep, and his back was covered with love bites and finger bruises, and from where Blair stood he could see from the condition of Jim's ass that this wasn't the first round of the evening's entertainment, and might not even be the second.

Dan's hand tightened on the metal can, and it clanked against the doorframe just as Jim plunged deeper than before, pushing Casey further over on the bed as they both came. The slight sound caught their attention, and both of them turned their heads toward the doorway. Their jaws dropped, but they didn't let go of each other. Jim's ass, Blair noted, hadn't yet stopped moving.

As Jim finally slowed, shivering and panting, and his eyes met Blair's, Dan threw the wastebasket across the room, where it hit the dresser and thudded against the thick carpet. Dan turned on his heel as Blair stepped back, and he tried to slam the bedroom door but it flew open again as if on springs. Without another glance back at the bedroom, Blair turned to follow Dan. Dan slapped the television into silence as he walked past it and left the suite, and Blair followed him, slamming the door to the hall emphatically. It stayed shut.

***

Halfway to the elevator, Dan stopped and leaned his forehead against the silk wallpaper. "Oh, shit."

"What?" Blair's voice sounded strained.

"I don't have anywhere to stay. That's my suite. I'm not staying there with him and whoever that was."

"Yes, you do."

Dan turned his face until only the side of his forehead still touched the wall. Blair's eyes were dark, and his face wore a look Dan had seen on Dana's face during that horrible Sally-and-Casey situation a year ago.

"Come back to my place," Blair whispered. "You can stay with me." Blair's mouth was set into a straight line, narrowing his lips drastically, his jaw hardening.

It didn't take a lightning bolt. "You know who was there with him, don't you?"

"Yeah." Blair closed his eyes as if trying not to see what he'd seen. "My partner."

***

"What was that all about?" Jim asked, between panting breaths.

"It's a long story." Casey found it hard to speak at all, let alone to think of the look on Dan's face.

"I thought you said you weren't --"

"I'm not. We're not."

"Neither are we."

"Then -- "

"Tomorrow. I'm not doing this tonight."

"Stay. Please."

"Okay."

***

Dan felt himself shaking by the time he and Blair reached Blair's place. He couldn't have said why -- his emotions were so far from being sorted out that they might have been in separate countries -- but between the fight he'd had with Casey and the long phone call with Rebecca it had been a very long day.

His mind was strangling in the vapor trails as the emotions raced through it. How dare Casey have found someone to be with when he himself felt so bereft? How dare Casey get on his high horse about Rebecca? How dare Casey enjoy bedding this stranger when he himself had always been there, available, willing -- and then --

He walked into the third-floor apartment without noticing anything about the decor. His eyes fixed on a small pottery bowl on a bookshelf. It must have come from an archeological dig or a reservation; his bet, considering what Blair had said of his college work, would have been from a dig. It didn't look like much at first glance, but the more he looked at it and the more his eyes followed the subtle dark lines on the reddish pottery the more intricate and precious it looked to him, as if it were drawing him into a different world.

He shook his head slightly and blinked. Another world, now, when he could barely deal with the one he was in.

Blair was in the kitchen, taking off his police-issued pistol and putting it in a drawer, along with his badge. He stretched, and the creak of the ligaments and bones in his back sounded loud in the quiet room. At the end of the stretch, he rubbed his face with his hands and, going to the old fridge, brought out two beers. He popped the caps on them and walked around the kitchen island to hand one to Dan.

Dan took the few steps closer, accepted the beer in his right hand, and let his hand rest on the island. He stared at the beer, and at the bowl on the shelf again, and then back at Blair, and noticed that Blair's position as he stood there mirrored his own.

He had made a friend. He might have lost a partner, who could know, but he'd gained a friend.

Who might have lost a partner of his own, from the look on Blair's face.

It was too damned much.

Dan reached out with his free hand to touch Blair's cheek. He could feel the dark stubble of five-o-clock shadow under his palm as he leaned forward.

"Oh, what the hell," he said, and kissed Blair.

Blair's free hand came up on his cheek and reached back to cradle his head; he opened his lips, and felt Blair do the same. When they finally pulled back from what had become a long, deep kiss, both of them had their hands in each other's hair and the beers stood neglected, dripping condensation onto the counter.

Blair's eyes blazed with a different light than before.

"Come upstairs," he said in a throaty voice.

Dan didn't need anything more.

Together, hand in hand, they climbed the open stairs to the loft, shutting off the lights on the way, until they stood by the bed. They undressed each other in the blue-tinted moonlight slanting through the skylights over the bed, and fell together onto the broad, soft mattress.

It wasn't just burning off emotions, and it wasn't just comfort. The emotions had sparked the fire, and every touch stoked it to burn higher and hotter as they tore each other's clothes off and rolled over and over on the bed. They tried to touch each other everywhere at once, to taste every soft inch of skin, as if missing some tender spot would leave it unappreciated. They kissed up and down each other's bodies, licking and nuzzling and sucking, exploring, tasting, and for a long time suckled on each other's cocks, deriving comfort from the pleasure each was giving the other. When, finally, both of them came at the same time, they were holding each other tightly as twins, legs wrapped around each other and straining to hold them together, and if either had asked which one had been inside and which had been around him neither would have been able to say for sure because they both had, they both had done it all, burning out each other's painful emotions and wrapping each other in as much human comfort as can be gained by the warm touch of skin against skin along the full length of two naked bodies.

And then they fell asleep, still wrapped around each other on the broad, soft bed.

***

Rrrrrring. Rrrrrring. Rrrrrring.

After a bleary-eyed moment, Casey realized he was hearing the automated wake-up call from the hotel desk. He picked up the phone, dropped it back into its cradle again, and considered whether he could get away with being just a little late to work -- say, three or four hours, or maybe long enough for the hangover he felt to recede just a bit. But the other warm body in the bed rolled over toward him, and it suddenly became much more important to wake up than to stay asleep any longer.

"Mmmmph?"

"Don't tell me you're a morning person," Casey said, his eyes still shut.

"All right. Won't tell you," a warm baritone voice said.

Casey pried one eye open. Even if, in his wildest dreams, he'd thought Sally could put out that much heat in a bed, he would've known it wasn't Sally just from the size of the shoulders that lay next to him, let alone the deeper voice.

Definitely not Sally.

Absolutely not Dana, or Lisa, but then neither of them was on this side of the Mississippi River, as far as he knew.

He opened the other eye and attempted, somewhat successfully, to focus on his bedmate, who watched him with a smile.

"You want me to call room service for coffee, or stop at an espresso bar on the way to Ferris Fieldhouse?" the man asked.

Casey squinted. Friendly guy exactly his own height, with clear blue eyes, wonderful muscles, and a wild abandon in bed. The bar. The restaurant. Watching _Sports Night_ with him.

"Jim?" he ventured.

"I figured it would take you a while to remember," Jim said, not taking this occurrence badly. "You want me to clear out, or am I still invited along to watch how _Sports Night_ is made in the field?"

"If you have any idea where I'm supposed to be in," he squinted at the clock, "twenty-seven minutes, please don't leave."

"Tell you what," Jim said. "I'll take a two-minute shower, and go out and bring back as much caffeine as you want to get you going, and then I'll take you to Ferris Fieldhouse. All right?"

"Great." Casey rolled over and pulled the covers over his head. "Just make sure I'm awake before I get into the shower, so I don't fall asleep in there."

"Okay." He could hear the smile in Jim's voice. "Twenty-four minutes."

"Aaargh."

***

"How do you like your eggs, Dan?" Blair stood at the stove, uncracked eggs in his hand, cool from the fridge.

"Scrambled with a little cheddar cheese but no onions," came from the bathroom's open door.

"I'll make a double batch, then. Don't want to breathe onion breath on the assembled fans, right?" Six eggs went into the hot butter in the frying pan, followed quickly by a quarter pound of chopped cheddar, and the smell of eggs cooking swirled through the air.

"You got it." Dan emerged from the bathroom in an oxford shirt that had been hiding in the back of Blair's closet, and his chinos, under which he wore borrowed underwear from Blair's drawer. Blair had tossed a small load of laundry into the washer before starting breakfast, figuring that somewhere along the line that day he'd be able to toss it into the dryer and get Dan's clothes back to him. "Nice place."

"Thanks."

"You said you were in anthropology, right? That must be where this comes from." Dan pointed at the small bowl that had entranced him the night before.

"Oh, you've got very cool taste. That's a bowl I found in a secondhand shop for a few bucks; it's almost an exact double of a really ancient Anasazi bowl found on a dig I was on in Arizona a few years ago. The one from the dig went to the museum, but I made a sketch of it, and when I saw this one I knew I had to have it."

"You're sure it's a different one?"

"Oh, yeah. Different craze marks, the kind of stuff that comes with age. But very similar labyrinth patterns."

"Labyrinth." Dan sat down at the island and accepted the plate loaded with eggs and two pieces of whole-wheat toast, and a cup of coffee. "You know the joke about the ideal lover?"

"The one who turns into a pizza at 3 a.m.?" Blair grinned.

"You come pretty close, man. Pretty damn close."

"Thanks." Blair checked the clock. "How're we doing on time?"

Dan shrugged. "I phoned Jeremy first thing and told him what time I'd be there, and he's doing backgrounds on the major athletes for me. No problems. We have half an hour." He grinned. "By the time I get there I'll be coherent. I always am."

Blair nodded; he knew the feeling. "You sure you want me along? This could get kind of uncomfortable." He occupied himself with buttering a slice of toast.

"I want you along. Really." Dan put down his fork. "Casey hates causing scenes in front of people he doesn't know, so having you there will keep it calm until I can figure out what to do. But if it's going to be too difficult for you ..." he added, watching Blair.

"Jim and I have been through a hell of a lot. You think I was joking about terrorists, renegade spies and assassins? And most of those were just his dates." Blair managed a grin. "It's better we get the uncomfortable part over with before we're on the job together, right?"

"Absolutely."

"Besides, I've always wondered how TV news is put together."

"Well, you know, it's a lot like making sausage. You may love the final result but you don't always want to know everything that goes into it. Unlike this," Dan ate the last bite of his eggs with the last bite of his toast, "where I know what's in it and it's great."

"_Sports Night_. Sausage. I'll keep that in mind." Blair put the dishes into the sink and gave them a fast wash with a sponge before dumping them into the drainer. "By the way, are there any sports figures out here you wanted to interview, in particular?"

"I wouldn't turn down a chance to talk with Orvelle Wallace about the future of West Coast hoops, if that's what you mean."

"Well, it just so happens that I know Orvelle --"

"Blair," Dan said, as he picked up his sportsjacket, "if you want to invite any of your co-workers to come and watch as well, be my guest. I'll sign for them to come behind the scenes. And if I get to talk with Orvelle, that's just icing for the cake."

"Let's see how it goes," Blair said cautiously, "but I'm going to keep that in mind. All the cops I know love your show; they really appreciate having something intelligent to watch when they get off shift."

Dan nodded on his way down the stairs. He held the door to the street for Blair. "Besides, considering the way things are, it might not hurt to have a few more cops around. The right cops, of course. Friends. Not just some random cops."

"Definitely not just random cops."

***

"Jeremy, where are Casey and Dan?" Sally paced back and forth in the media tent outside at Ferris Fieldhouse, the pleated silk trousers on her long legs making a slithering noise as she walked. She flipped pages on a clipboard, wrote notes and came as close to frowning as she could manage without acquiring actual wrinkles.

"Dan called in; he'll be here in a few minutes. He stayed over with a local friend last night to catch up on old times." Jeremy cleared his throat conscientiously. The Games outside had started an hour ago; they were supposed to be doing color coverage already so that after the principle events they could just dash over to the Special Olympics without delay. "I haven't heard from Casey."

"Did you call the hotel? And his cell phone?"

"Yes. Three times." He let a bit of his own frustration find its way into his voice, though as noncommittally as possible.

"All right. We'll just have to switch the order of the segments we're taping. If Dan gets here first, his clips get priority. Got it?"

"Casey's not going to like this."

Sally whirled and pointed a pencil at Jeremy, who caught himself ducking and stopped. "I can give a rat's ass what Casey McCall likes if he can't make it here on time. Got it?"

"Got it." He nodded, glad not to be Casey.

"Good. Where are the stats for Franklin, Noricetti and Landrey?"

"Right here." He handed her a sheet of paper, which she added to her clipboard.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Jeremy knew he'd be all right, as long as Dan and Casey showed up and did what they were supposed to do. Otherwise, his life wouldn't be fun for as long as it would take to explain to Natalie, and Dana, and Isaac, and even Calvin, why their hand-picked, expensive professional sports reporters were missing the ball on minor-league events. And it wouldn't be much fun after that at all, providing he still was working as assistant producer and didn't get benched.

Until one of them showed up, his stomach would continue gurgling.

Especially since he'd overheard just enough of the fight they'd had yesterday to make him wonder if either one would show up at all.

"Hey, Jeremy. Got a guest pass available?" It was Dan, sounding as if nothing had happened at all. He was followed by a curly-haired man whose bright blue eyes seemed to look everywhere at once. "This is Detective Blair Sandburg. He gave me a ride here this morning, and I told him he could stay and watch us work."

"Sure thing. Detective Sandburg?"

"Oh, just call me Blair. It's my day off."

"No problem. I'm Jeremy Goodwyn, the assistant producer." They shook hands and Jeremy found Blair an official guest press pass so he wouldn't be bounced.

"What does an assistant producer do?" Blair asked.

"Out here? Whatever's needed to get things to work." Jeremy smiled, and Blair nodded. Maybe this wouldn't be as much of a rolling disaster as he expected. "Back in New York? Research. Editing. Keeping track of what's happening in sports that someone else might miss. I did a feature story on a yacht that went down in a storm."

"I remember that. The Sword of Orion. That was you? Good going, man."

"Thanks." Jeremy smiled, relieved. Maybe things would work out. At least, if they didn't, Dan's friend would be fun to talk with, as he really had watched the show and remembered the important things.

***

Sally was so involved in pacing the length of _Sports Night_'s press tent that the only way Dan could stop her was by standing in her path, even though that meant risking life and limb if she didn't notice he was there. She was, after all, nearly a foot taller than he was in the heels she wore. He didn't want to think of their probably difference in weight.

A mental image of that long length of beautiful weight wrestling passionately with Casey in his bed at home appeared in his mind. He tried to blink it away, but as it metamorphosed into the scene he'd walked in on with Blair's partner, Sally stopped in front of him.

"Dan, you're here. Where's --"

"Running a little late. He'll be here." Much as he hated Casey right now, the protective reflex was strong. "What've we got?"

"Here's the rundown. Since you're here first, you get first pick." She handed him three pages from the clipboard. "Background on the athletes, their Olympic hopes, coaches' names." Sally studied Dan. "Did something happen to you?"

Instantly wary, Dan replied, "Why do you say that?"

"No reason."

"Well, I'm having a good time here."

"It shows."

"Good."

"But make sure Alison deals with that hickey behind your left ear."

Dan's hand went to the place behind his left ear. "What hickey?"

"I was pulling your leg," Sally said, smiling. "There's no hickey there."

"Try pulling the other one; maybe I'll get taller."

"We can always hope." Her eyes roamed the area around them, searching for Casey. "Or we could stand you on a box for filming. They did that with Humphrey Bogart."

"Alan Ladd." Jeremy said.

"Bogart." She looked down at Jeremy, a slightly superior tilt curving her lips.

Jeremy was unimpressed. "Alan Ladd, in This Gun For Hire with Veronica Lake. She was taller than he was, so they had him stand on a crate."

Sally, ever smiling, turned back to Dan. "See? It could be worse, Dan. We could make you carry a crate around with you to stand on."

"I can see that. I think I'll forget about it for now." Dan scanned the pages. "You don't have what Dan and I wrote yesterday, do you?"

"I have what you gave me when you left yesterday afternoon. Take a look."

It was a miracle. Most of it was there -- everything he'd written, and everything Casey had done up to the point where he'd gotten emphatic in his discussion of Rebecca and had deleted three pages by accident -- and it had all been worked into a proper script.

"Okay. Any chance of records being set today?"

Jeremy handed him a notepad. "All of the sprinters in the hundred-yard dash are within seconds of the world record. Same with two athletes in the decathlon, and one in the javelin throw. I found some obscure details here for you on the history of the various sports; it might make good fill."

"Obscure is good. Thanks."

"You really should have Alison look at that place behind your ear, though."

Dan gave him an 'Et tu, Brute?' look.

Jeremy shrugged. "Natalie told me I had to maintain the honor of the production staff by giving you a hard time if you needed it."

"I didn't realize the production staff's honor was involved with my neck."

"You'd be surprised how far we'll go to make you look good."

"I'll keep that in mind." Dan motioned to Blair, who'd been standing in the background watching the three of them juggle paperwork. "This is the schedule; it's not quite like the run sheet we use when we're doing the show in the studio. That one's broken up into ten-minute segments; this one is more like a list of what we have to do today and when it's likely to happen. It's a bit looser than usual."

"They don't run sporting events to please us, no matter how nicely we ask them." Sally was standing next to Dan, looking purposefully down at Blair. She put out her hand. "I'm Sally Sasser, executive producer for West Coast Update."

"Detective Blair Sandburg, Cascade Police." Blair shook her hand. He didn't appear to be disturbed or intimidated at all by talking with a woman who stood at least six inches taller than he did before she put on her Italian walking pumps in the morning. Instead, he smiled at her. "Thanks for letting me just stand by and observe what you do. I can tell you, the Cascade P.D. is really grateful that your show is on when we get off shift. It's so good to have something intelligent to watch early in the morning."

Sally blinked. "Detective...Sandburg, let me say that you -- and anyone else from the Cascade P.D. -- are welcome to watch us at work as long as you don't get in the way. It's so good to know we have such a devoted following." Her voice almost purred.

"You have no idea," Blair said, still smiling.

Jeremy blinked. Game, set and match to the newcomer. He hadn't seen Sally so snowed since ... since ... any time he could remember.

And even if there wasn't really a hickey on Dan's neck, behind his ear or anywhere else, there certainly was one peeking over the collar of Detective Sandburg's shirt.

And Dan looked happier than he had in a long time, standing there smiling at his detective friend.

Not that any of that was his business. None of it was. Not at all.

But he had to think of the Greater Good, which was _Sports Night_, not to mention _West Coast Update_. And he had to wonder where Casey McCall was, in any of this. Or if he was in any of it whatsoever. Or if, after the full-scale blowup he'd overheard echoing through the halls of their borrowed production rooms, Casey even intended to show up today.

Ridiculous. Casey was a professional. He was the high-priced talent, the name that kept the show on the air, and he needed Dan Rydell for a partner because it just didn't work right if he was with anyone else. It never had. Jeremy had watched everything both of them had ever done, live and on tape, back when they were working together in Texas and before that, when Casey was in L.A. and Dan was in that experimental little Connecticut cable news program that flopped after six months.

Jeremy was starting to consider whether the local area's resources included Search and Rescue dogs that might be trained to locate errant sportscasters when a battered blue-and-white truck pulled up in the parking lot and _Sports Night_'s high-priced big-name talent fell out of it in a shirt that clearly wasn't one provided by Wardrobe. Maybe falling out of it wasn't exactly the right description, but Casey was definitely wavering, although he did manage not to spill his Super Grande Quad Latte on his yellow-and-olive shadow-stripe polo shirt.

Yellow and olive. Alison would have to find Casey something else to wear, or else devise new makeup that wouldn't make him look like a refugee from a jaundice clinic.

Casey's balance seemed to stabilize as the truck's driver got out and closed the door, and the two of them headed toward the _Sports Night_ tent. The driver stood the same height as Casey, but looked about half again as wide in the shoulders. He patted Casey on the shoulder and Casey gave him a smile.

Jeremy suddenly remembered the pocket organizer that Natalie had given him for his last birthday. One of the features he'd always thought might be useful, though he hadn't had to use it yet, was its ability to create flow charts or decision trees.

Natalie was always good at thinking ahead.

***

Taken the right way, the situation really was funny, Blair thought.

Casey and Dan had fallen easily into what looked like their normal work routine, treating each other with professionalism on camera. As soon as the camera stopped rolling, though, each of them was giving the other a series of looks that Blair knew he was interpreting properly. They weren't that different from the looks he and Jim were giving each other.

However, Jim's attention to all this was distracted by Sally, who had taken one look at him, smiled sweetly, and cut him out of the herd as if he were a champion ram and she the prize bitch at the national sheepdog trials.

Considering Jim's current record with long-legged, beautiful women -- Blair carefully kept that thought at 'women' rather than 'people' for the moment -- it was time for someone to run interference.

He stepped aside, out of the way of the cameras and toward the restrooms on the other side of the field, and waved to Dan to let him know where he was going; Dan nodded and smiled at him and continued to ask the sprint coach about his athletes' prospects for the Olympics.

The restrooms were a safe bet for now to keep a busy Sentinel from hearing him press a familiar series of numbers into his cell phone and get an even more familiar voice on the other end of the call.

"Hey, Simon! How would you like to meet Casey McCall and Dan Rydell from _Sports Night_?"

"Sandburg, if this is a joke on the one day in ten when I get to sleep in --"

"No joke, Captain. Really. I'm down here at Ferris Fieldhouse with them and Jim, as their guests at the Quo Vadimus Games, and Dan said that I could invite more of Major Crime to come down and watch them at work for the day. So I thought of you first, Simon."

"I'm touched, Sandburg, that you have this kind of consideration for your superior officer. However --"

"And did I mention that the executive producer of _West Coast Update _is here, and she's single, and beautiful and nearly as tall as you are?"

Simon coughed; Blair smothered a snort. "Say no more. I'll be right over, soon as I call Darryl and tell him I'll be over at the Special Olympics a little later. He's volunteering over there as his school community service project."

"That's great, Simon. See you soon. Just tell them you're looking for the CSC tent as Dan Rydell's guest."

On the way back to the tent, Blair did manage to wipe the smile off his face, but he couldn't help bouncing just a little on the balls of his feet as he moved.

***

Jim watched the organized chaos around him with interest. He didn't have to do anything but enjoy himself, and he might learn something about how sports coverage worked that would explain how and why these two did it better than anyone on the planet, as far as he was concerned.

It felt good just to be someplace in the background at an event and not have to work the crowd. He nodded to the security guard, whom he'd known for years, and the guard waved back and kept going.

But it felt especially good to have that loosening and lengthening of muscles along his spine that reminded him of how sated he'd been last night, and the flush on Casey's cheeks as he went into orgasm for the third time.

Jim felt a small smile creep onto his lips, and he let it stay there and take up residence.

"You know, Jim, you look like a ballplayer to me," Sally was saying. "Did you ever play the game?"

He let the smile out a little more. "Not really. Don't get me wrong, I love basketball and baseball, but I don't have the skill at that level. It wasn't a great loss to the world."

"You never know," she said, her eyes sizing him up expertly. "But it looks as if you've lived an active life."

"Well, I was in the Rangers for a while. Army Rangers," he added, seeing her go through the mental gymnastics of figuring out what other Rangers existed besides the ones that were sports teams. "And I like to keep in shape for my job."

"What do you do?"

"I'm a detective with the Major Crime unit, Cascade P.D."

"Oh, I feel safer already." Sally's eyes sparkled. A movement caught her eye and she glanced past him. "Isn't that Orvelle Wallace over there?"

"I think so. Hey, Orvelle!" Jim waved, and Orvelle waved back and walked toward them. "How's it going?"

"Figured I'd get a look at the runners, see if I could pick up some new tricks for getting across the floor," Orvelle said. He smiled at Sally, who caught herself looking up at him and smiled back. "Don't think we've met; I'm Orvelle Wallace."

"Sally Sasser, executive producer of _West Coast Update_ for CSC," Sally said, shaking his hand.

"Say, isn't that Casey McCall from _Sports Night_?"

"It certainly is. Would you like to say hello?"

"Are you kidding? I've been a fan of his for years."

"Casey." Sally said, stepping over to him and tapping him on the arm. Casey looked up from his notepad, where he'd been scribbling something as Jeremy talked to him. "One of your fans wants to meet you."

"Hi, I'm Orvelle Wallace, and I really enjoy your show," Orvelle said.

Jim enjoyed the look on Casey's face; it reminded him of the way Blair looked when he'd found some wonderful new idea that nobody'd thought about in the same way before. By the time Casey and Orvelle had finished their mutual admiration meeting, Orvelle had agreed to an exclusive interview with Casey about the future of West Coast hoops, and Sally was setting it up with the camera-and-sound men.

"Nice seeing Orvelle on his feet again since that last bad sprain," Blair said, next to him. He hadn't even noticed Blair's arrival; how long had he been able to slip in under the radar like that? "So, he's doing an exclusive with _Sports Night_?"

"With Casey, at least."

"Uh-huh." Blair's mouth set in a line for a moment, then smoothed out again into its usual shape. "No icing on my brownie today."

"What?"

"Nothing."

***

Jeremy shook his head, watching Sally. If he'd thought she was in horse heaven before, he knew she was now, surrounded by men who were taller than she was. She must really miss basketball, he thought.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw someone else approaching the tent. It was going to start getting crowded soon if they didn't go cover some sporting events. This newcomer, like the last one, was well over six feet tall, but black, and smiling widely, and Dan's friend Blair was going to meet him.

"Sandburg, thanks for the call. You know, I did my duty by the rest of the department I phoned Rafe and Brown and Connor, but none of them were home," the newcomer said.

"Right. And how many times did you let the phone ring on each call, Simon?" Blair grinned at him.

"Now, now." The man waved a large hand. "Hi, Jim."

"Oh, you already know him," Blair said breezily. He waited a moment, until the knot of people around Orvelle had started to untangle, and said, "Sally, I'd like you to meet my captain, Simon Banks. Simon, this is Sally Sasser, executive producer of _West Coast Update_."

As Sally turned around and looked up, Simon's smile went even wider. Jeremy figured that at some point it had to stop, or the top of Simon's head would have come off long ago, but the man seemed capable of showing an immense number of teeth. And, teeth or not, he seemed very nice.

Were his eyes starting to go, or was Sally actually acting a bit fluttery, the way Dana acted around Casey?

Blair introduced Dan and Casey, and Simon shook hands and gave them intelligent comments on the program; obviously, the West Coast viewers were more attentive and observant than a lot of East Coast fans they'd met, or at least more able to hold an intelligent conversation. Maybe it was the rain, which had never stopped drizzling lightly on the field. Then again, Calvin Trager had been an East Coast fan and he'd bought CSC to keep the show alive, so who was Jeremy to criticize East Coast sports fandom? Was fandom even a word? He'd have to ask Dan about that.

Casey, in the meantime, had stepped over the few feet to stand next to stand next to his friend, Jim Ellison, who looked so ex-military it wasn't even funny, and to talk with Orvelle. Casey was standing loose and comfortable, without his usual slight tension, and as they joked around he took out his notebook and wrote something down and asked Orvelle something Jeremy couldn't hear, and Orvelle nodded. And Jim stepped back with a smile as Casey waved the cameraman over and, just like that, Casey was getting an exclusive 'insider' interview on the future of West Coast hoops with Orvelle Wallace.

Jeremy shook his head. People called him a weather nerd, but it wasn't quite true. It just meant he was more observant, and his memory associated the things he learned with other things he knew and made clearer patterns he could read. What people forgot was what Dylan had sung: you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

And right now a force five hurricane was heading for the Easterners from _Sports Night_.

Dan and Blair exchanged looks. Dan's face crumpled a little then smoothed out quickly into a mask, and Blair said something under his breath that earned him a fast look and a small, genuine smile. Dan shrugged. Blair glanced across the field, past the knots of observers and news people, and waved, and someone else with long arms waved back, and he and Dan started to smile as they met the woman Blair had been waving at. She looked stunning, dark and slender; she could have been Florence Griffith Joyner if that weren't entirely impossible. She was apparently a coach, someone Blair knew, and Dan was already asking her about the women she coached, and waving at the cameraman, who had finished his shots with Casey and was hurrying across the field to start filming again.

And, now that Orvelle was leaving to watch the hundred-yard dash, it was Casey who leaned across to Jim to ask something, and Jim who shook his head. And Casey's mouth was working, the way it did when he was trying to follow all the rules he'd been taught and couldn't find the right one, the way it had worked near the end of Dana's engagement to Gordon.

There was no way to mistake it. They'd already had the high pressure variants, and the prevailing winds were starting to blow hard and push people away from each other.

Sally was still talking to Captain Simon Banks, telling him that they'd be going over to the Special Olympics in the afternoon, after they finished their interviews here, and Simon was standing closer to her and asking questions about her job and how she liked it. Sally's smile looked like sunshine, the clear bright light at the edges of the clouds, the light that goes away as the thunderheads roll in and the sky darkens for the storm.

Someone should batten down the hatches and put plywood over the windows, to keep the flying glass from hurting bystanders. And someone should call out the National Guard to keep order.

But who could he call? They were on their own on this coast. Natalie was filling in for Dana as Dana was due to leave for Calvin's latest project, overseeing the start of an _EuroSports Night_ program in Zurich, Switzerland. Isaac was the only one who could really ring the chimes over Dan or Casey, but he was taking a long-postponed vacation with his wife and daughter and son-in-law and grandson. He hadn't gone on vacation before because he hadn't ever been sure J.J. wouldn't take his job while he was away, but Calvin had dealt with J.J. and Isaac felt safe and secure, finally. And Isaac deserved to feel safe and secure, without any alarums and excursions from Cascade.

Jeremy sighed. If he'd have to be the National Guard, he'd better be prepared. He pulled out the Palm Pilot that Natalie had given him for his birthday and set to work on flow charts.

***

"That was great of you, Blair. Thanks," Dan said as they walked back across the field.

"Hey, no problem. I haven't seen Lidia in so long, it was just good to get to talk with her for a few minutes. She was getting her doctorate in sports medicine when I was a freshman, and she taught me a lot about how to work out muscle strains."

"She has a doctorate in sports medicine? As well as Olympic bronze in heptathlon?"

"Yeah. She doesn't get paid that much for coaching, not even at this level, because of the students she takes."

"I can see that. But she's so amazing."

Casey and Jim met them in front of the tent. "Who was that?" Casey asked. "She looked interesting."

"Lidia Davenport. Dr. Lidia Davenport. She's coaching two athletes in heptathlon."

"Doesn't she have bronze medals for hundred-meter hurdles and hundred-yard-dash?

Dan nodded. "She was the fastest woman in the world for a while. Now she's only coaching athletes who have physical problems, like severe asthma, people nobody else will take the time to work with regardless of talent." He smiled. "I see you got your interview with Orvelle. What's the future of West Coast hoops?"

"Watch it and see." Casey wasn't quite swaggering; he looked too relaxed to swagger, but the attempt was there.

Jim held up a hand. His face had gone very still.

In the tent, Jeremy turned and looked at Jim, who stood between Dan and Casey as if he were a tree and they were squirrels.

"What is it?" Blair asked. His face was intent, all humor gone.

Jim's eyes searched the field. "Nine o'clock, Chief. Some runner's boyfriend just took a swing at her coach and it's getting ugly."

"Okay. We're on it," Blair said. Without another word the two men dashed across the field to the far side of the track, beyond the edge of the grandstand, where what looked like a simple fight was starting to boil up into something Olympic-sized on its own.

"What's going on?" Casey asked.

"They're cops." Dan said.

"They're what?"

"They're cops. Blair's a detective, and your friend is his partner."

"Jim's not a cop."

"Casey, Jim's a cop. Blair's a cop. So's the other man -- where did he go? No, he's not just a cop, he's a magician; he's taken Sally to lunch in the middle of the production day."

"Jim's a cop?" Casey's jaw dropped.

"Don't tell me you didn't know." Dan shook his head. "And you call yourself a newsman. Where are your finely honed observation skills? He looks like a cop, Casey. He moves like a cop. What made you think he wasn't a cop?"

"He talks like a baseball player. He knows the game. He knows basketball. How was I supposed to know he was a cop?"

"Right, a basketball player with that kind of build."

"Patrick Ewing, if he lifted weights."

"You're so cooked. You might have noticed the gun last night."

"What gun?"

"No, wait, the gun you were noticing wasn't a sidearm. My mistake."

"Dan." Casey's voice sounded dangerously factual.

"What?"

"Do you know why Rebecca was seeing Steve Sisco?"

"I'm not having this conversation." Dan tried to turn away. Casey got back in front of him.

"She's pregnant."

"I'm not talking with you, Casey."

"It's not your child, it's his."

"Oh, and when were you in my bedroom?"

"I notice things."

"Sure, you notice things. Like Detective Ellison's gun and badge."

"I saw them in the elevator."

"The gun and badge?"

"Steve and Rebecca."

"And that's incriminating?"

"You just don't want to hear the truth."

"I'm not having this conversation."

"Stop sounding like Dana."

Dan had finally managed to turn away but he swerved back to glare at Casey over his shoulder. "Don't start with that, Case. You left the high road behind. It's on the other side of the damned continent right now." His voice dropped to a near growl. "And how long have you been sleeping with men?"

Casey's eyes were steady on his. "A long time."

"A long time? How long?"

"Longer than I've known you."

"Really."

"Yes. Really."

"And you've never said anything."

"Danny, some parts of my life aren't anyone else's business."

"Ah."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Now it makes sense."

"What?"

"The other reason."

"The other reason?"

"The other reason Lisa broke up with you. It wasn't the Conan show."

"It was the Conan show, Dan." Casey's face showed the strain, finally, the same strain Dan had seen on it when he'd found out that his son had lied about his Little League scores. "You've got it wrong."

"Do I?"

"Yes. This isn't the reason Lisa left." Casey's voice was still steady, but the tones were wrong. "It's the reason I stayed with her for so long."

As Dan's jaw dropped, Casey turned his back on him and walked into the tent, past Jeremy and out the other side. "I'm taking a break," he called back to Jeremy in a voice approximating normal if the hearer didn't know him that well.

"Right." Jeremy's shocked face met Dan's.

Jeremy muttered something Dan couldn't hear.

"What?" Dan asked.

"I was wrong," Jeremy mumbled.

"You were wrong? On what? We're not live here; there's time to fix things. We can do voice-overs." Dan was starting to get worried. Jeremy might be badly mistaken at times, but he was never really wrong about anything in sports that mattered.

"The weather."

"It's drizzling, just as you said."

Jeremy shook his head, took off his glasses and wiped them, and looked across at Dan without the glasses. His face looked surprisingly vulnerable, as if he had changed from Superman to Clark Kent without them.

"It's not a hurricane or a tornado. It's an earthquake." Jeremy's voice shook just a little. "I read the signs wrong. The animals weren't looking for cover the same way. The light was different."

"What are you talking about? Are you all right?" Dan cast around and found a clean cup and got Jeremy a fresh cup of coffee, with milk and two sugars, the way he liked it. He found a chair and Jeremy sat down. "Did you hear something from the seismological labs? Are we on the San Andreas Fault or something?"

"The San Andreas runs under that mountain on the left, and it's fine." Jeremy shook his head. "Not that kind of earthquake. Emotional weather. You and Casey and Sally. I was misled by Sally, but she wasn't around when you two were fighting yesterday."

"Arguing." Dan checked his watch. Lunch would be a good idea about now, especially since they had to get to the other campus afterward for the Special Olympics. "Let's get some lunch, Jeremy. Blair said there's decent food in the student union."

"Dan, he walked off from you because neither of you was listening to the other. When one of you isn't listening, it's not that bad, but when both of you aren't, it's time to call the National Guard. But there's nobody to call."

"Jeremy, it'll blow over. It'll be all right."

"Tell that to Hurricanes Agnes and Andrew."

"We've had differences before. We've worked together for years; you know that."

"Yes, I know that." Jeremy put his glasses back on; his face seemed to come back into focus. "But the reasons you argued weren't as fundamental as this."

The rain had slowed to a drizzle. Dan set off along the path toward the student union, Jeremy beside him. Dan shot Jeremy a sideways glance, acknowledging the hit.

"You heard, just now."

"Yes."

Dan nodded. "I don't know what to believe."

"I know. That's why it's an earthquake."

"I talked to Rebecca last night."

"What happened?"

"It's over. Casey was right."

Jeremy absorbed this as he sipped his coffee. He'd learned to sip coffee on the run as a reporter, a skill he was glad to have acquired before he came to _Sports Night_, where it was practically a requirement for drinking any coffee at all. "You didn't tell Casey."

Dan tried to smile. It didn't work well. "I might have, if he hadn't been getting it on with the Cascade Police Department when I got to the suite."

"Ah." Across the field, Jim and Blair had handcuffed a man and appeared to be talking with several people and talking on their cell phones simultaneously. It was like a silent movie; all action, not enough noise to matter. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know." Dan's eyes felt sore. "All these years I've known him, and he never told me he goes both ways. Never once."

"He was married most of the time, Dan. I've never been married, but I don't think that's a normal topic of married conversation in most families."

"He was miserable. Thirteen years he was with her, being miserable. I never understood that. Did you ever meet Lisa?" Jeremy shook his head. "You're a fortunate man. Don't ever forget that."

"I know I'm fortunate. I have Natalie."

"Yes." At least there was Natalie to smile about. Natalie always made people feel good, just by being herself. "We're friends. Why couldn't he tell me?"

"Dan, how many gay professional athletes do you know?"

"Out of the closet or gay?"

"Out of the closet."

"Not that many. A few. One or two."

"And how many professional athletes do you know?"

"Thousands." Dan thought this through. "You think it might be a professional closet, not a personal one."

"I think it's possible."

"He could have told me."

"He certainly could have told you, but he works with you ever day. And there was the Dana thing."

"Yes. And other things as well. Did you know that Casey had a Sally thing going during some of the time when the Dana thing wasn't working?"

"I heard after the fact. It doesn't surprise me at all." Jeremy finished the coffee and pitched the cup into a trash bin outside the nearest building. "It's not just the Dana thing with Casey, it's the privacy thing."

"But he has the honesty thing going too. Everyone has to be honest except him; that's the way it looks from here."

Jeremy groaned. "Maybe it's a hurricane and an earthquake at the same time."

Dan's forehead wrinkled. "If it's on the West Coast, isn't it called something else?"

"You're right. It's a typhoon. Tidal waves. Massive flooding. And an earthquake." Jeremy shook his head mournfully. "Just promise me you're not going to do something drastic without telling me. I need to know how to write the obituaries. I'm not good at obituaries; they took me off the night shift at the _Sacramento Bee_ because I couldn't do them right. That's when I moved into the sports department."

"And we're all glad you did, Jeremy." Dan tried to look reassuring. "Nobody's going to write any obituaries. Nobody's going to die out here; I promise."

"You can't promise something like that."

"Yes, I can."

"Why?"

"Because I'm not Casey McCall, and I don't lie to my friends."

Jeremy bit his lip. "In the interests of full disclosure --"

"Yes. Both ways. Always have. Didn't talk about it much, but I would have if anyone asked."

"Fine. Thanks." Jeremy nodded. "I'm not asking."

"I appreciate that."

"I'm not going to promise that I'm not telling."

"Jeremy," Dan said gently, "you do what you have to do, and that's fine with me. Okay?"

"Okay. I think I'll have a nervous breakdown now."

"You can't."

"Why not?"

"We're due over at the Special Olympics in an hour. Can you schedule it during lunch?"

Gulp. "I can do that."

***

"What do you mean, there are no cars available?" Jim snarled.

"Just what I said. All the uniforms are directing traffic for the governor's visit," Blair said, as patiently as possible considering the situation. "Here, you talk to Kenny." He tossed the cell phone at Jim, who caught it in one hand and put it to his ear.

"Kenny, what -- no, but -- you can't be -- oh, fine. Great. See you soon." The words bore no relationship to the increasingly sarcastic tone of Jim's voice. He pitched the phone back at Blair.

Blair snatched it out of the air and tucked it conscientiously away. "Hey, don't blame the messenger. It's not the phone's fault. Actually, it's his fault." He waved a hand toward the disheveled man who sat on the ground with his hands cuffed behind himself, getting muddier by the minute. "Besides, there's some good news along with the bad."

"Which is?"

"We can drop him with Riccetti at Station Three if we get there in twenty minutes or less; otherwise we have to go downtown into the traffic."

"He's not going in my clean truck."

"Oh, and my Volvo isn't as sacred as the truck? Just for that, you'll have to sit in back with him and keep him in order, since I didn't go to the trouble of installing a security grill."

"Fine," Jim snapped, knowing all too well how hard it would be to get his long legs into the small back seat.

"Good." Blair hauled the man to his feet. "Come along, Mr. Lee. We'll have you out of this wet weather in a few minutes and in a nice, dry holding cell."

"Oh, thanks so much," Lee muttered.

"You're very welcome." Jim felt it was time he held up his end of the politely-worded sarcasm. "We do try to serve and protect, and I'm sure we'd all feel just terrible if you got the sniffles because you decided to beat down your girlfriend's coach when it was raining."

When they reached the Volvo, Blair spread an old tarp from the trunk over the back seat and Jim managed to get Lee and himself into the back without bumping anything vital on any hard surfaces. For the sake of safety, Lee sat behind the passenger seat, which meant that Jim was forced to be grateful that Blair's legs were short. If they'd been any longer, he'd have been chewing on his kneecaps.

They swung into traffic, with Blair taking the smaller two-lanes through the neighborhoods on the way to Station Three. He started to relax a little, after a few blocks, enough to start making conversation.

"Jim, did you ever think about pattern matching, and how important it is as a skill?"

"Not since the last time I went up against a jaguar."

Blair refused to take this as a putdown. "C'mon. It's how we know the difference between lady and ladybug. The kind of patterns a person perceives can make a huge difference in the way he views the world."

"You're going somewhere with this, Chief?"

"I've started to see a pattern I wasn't expecting, and I'm not too pleased about it."

"Oh?"

"Tall, slender, long-legged, and with big beautiful eyes."

"What?"

"You know what I'm talking about, Jim."

"Do I? Enlighten me, Chief. What am I missing here?"

"Your dates. Tall, slender, long-legged and with big beautiful eyes. Do I have to go into detail here?"

"I'd rather you didn't."

"Oh, I'm sure Mr. Lee here has no objections. Do you have any objections to the subject under discussion, Mr. Lee?" Blair glanced into the rear-view mirror; the soggy man slumped in the back seat shook his head. "Then we can proceed. Thank you for your consent, Mr. Lee."

"No problem," came the mumble from the back.

"Choose a different subject. Do I have to make myself any clearer?"

"No, Jim, from where I sit things look really clear. And from where I stood last night." He let a trace of impatience into his voice. "But let's clarify it some more, by all means. Do you have an actual height requirement, or is it a matter of comparing leg length? Lila wasn't that much taller than I am, but her legs were very long. Now, some of your other dates -- "

"That's enough, Sandburg."

"I don't think it is, Ellison."

Jim's eyes met Blair's in the mirror, steel gray striking sparks off gunmetal blue.

"It's all you're getting. This conversation is over."

"For now." Blair pulled up to the curb outside Station Three. "Mr. Lee, I'll have the pleasure of taking you inside so you can be booked by Sgt. Riccetti and given a nice dry place to sit. I'm sure my partner has other things he'd rather be doing."

"Excuse me, detective, but this is my collar, not yours. I'll take him in."

"Hey, I didn't think you were that short of collars lately, partner. Knock yourself out. I'm sure you can get a ride back to where you parked the truck afterward."

"You're welcome, partner. And while you're at it, change the sheets on your bed; the laundry's getting moldy waiting for you."

"My bed is just fine, Spike."

Blair threw him a mocking salute and left. He heard the Volvo rumbling up the street until its distinctive roar had blended into the rest of the traffic noise.

***

Sgt. Riccetti was glad to take custody of Mr. Lee, who would face charges of harassment and third-degree assault and battery on Monday, when Judge Fleen's court convened. As soon as he'd given the man over to the sergeant's custody, Jim headed for the street to wave down a cab. Casey wasn't going to have time to hang out again until the afternoon, and he needed lunch and a better shower than he'd gotten in the three minutes he'd had at the hotel.

When the cab dropped him at the corner, Jim pulled the door open and and he headed up the stairs at a fast walk. All he could think of was a hot shower and a bowl of the chili left over from two days ago, with Colby cheese grated over the top and melted just a little.

He got three steps into the loft when it hit him.

The scent of sex.

It flirted past his nostrils, teasing him no matter which direction he turned.

The kitchen smelled of scrambled eggs with cheese and coffee, and more faintly of Amber Beer, but with a slight seasoning of unfamiliar sweat. The scent wasn't strong in the living room, though the bathroom held its usual miasma of male smells doctored by soap and hot water. Both he and Blair had friends over often enough that a little strangeness here was probably within normal bounds.

As Jim came out of the bathroom he sniffed again. No, it wasn't coming from Blair's room, but from his. The memory of Blair's mocking grin hit like a whipcrack and he flared with anger. As he reached the top of the stairs the scent washed over him like an ocean wave toppling a surfer, and he felt as if he were drowning in it.

Tangy, sharp, sweet and sour. No mistake.

Unexpectedly, the story of the Three Bears popped into his mind, and he wanted to roar, along with Papa Bear, that someone had been sleeping in his bed. But if sleeping had been all that had occurred there, he wouldn't have minded. Blair'd slept in his bed when he'd been ill the year before, because it had been easier to take care of him there despite the running up and down stairs.

Sleep wasn't the problem.

It didn't matter that the bed had been made, after use, into a semblance of the order he kept it in. It still smelled of men having sex, making love, making the two-backed beast, making each other, licking and kissing and fucking each other, and his own scent wasn't there.

This was Sandburg's doing. He could smell it.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to find Sandburg and wrap his hands in Sandburg's shirt and make the guy listen to him, make him hold still and -- and --

He took three steps forward and started to strip the bed, methodically, noticing with almost clinical exactness the location and size of the spots on the sheets and the pattern of the wrinkles. And then he gathered the sheets up in his arms and all his ability to remain remote and in control of his emotions was gone.

The sheets smelled of Blair.

He closed his eyes, but behind his eyelids played a slide show of images of Blair in all his moods, happy, sad, wild, peaceful, soothing, challenging. Blair comforting an old woman outside her home as it burned. Blair helping him up the stairs when he'd torn his knee during pursuit. Blair on the couch, watching television. Blair explaining the psychomedicinal relationship among chocolates, good coffee, and the politics of post-Renaissance European imperialism, his hands and his hair flying in every direction, his face alight with enthusiasm.

Blair in the arms of another man. Between the legs of another man. Sliding against each other, and into each other, hips moving, lips tasting and licking and kissing, rolling on his broad soft queen-sized bed as if it were an Olympic playing field for the oldest sport known to man.

And he could see it. He could taste it in the back of his throat, the tang of the sheets was so strong. He felt his hands clutch the cotton fabric and wished the cotton was one of Blair's shirts, so he could take it off Blair and run his hands over that warm skin over the hard muscles, the soft fur on his chest and belly, so he could taste and touch and feel for himself what someone else had tasted and touched and felt.

Who else?

It had to have been Dan Rydell. The way they stood near each other this morning superimposed itself over the image of the way they had stood in the hotel doorway the night before. Blair had brought him back here, just as he might have brought back one of his college buddies whose roommate had brought a girlfriend home for the night.

Not exactly. No. If Blair had brought a college friend back to his place, he wouldn't have been having sex with him.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

He couldn't be sure of that, now.

He couldn't be sure of anything.

And a conversation he'd shoved to the dark side of his brain started to replay:

He'd been sitting on the couch months ago, reading the newspaper after work, since it had been Blair's turn to wash dishes. Blair had been saying something about a friend's research into cultural differences in domestic rituals that he'd been listening to absentmindedly when a sentence seemed to require a response, so he looked up and Blair said it again.

"You know, Jim, we might as well be married. We do everything together anyway."

He'd given his roommate a quizzical look. "Not quite everything, Chief."

"Well, yeah. But we could. If you were interested, that is."

Blair had finished the dishes, and was wiping his hands on a towel. He reached into the fridge for a beer, asked with a raised eyebrow whether Jim wanted one, took out a second beer, twisted the cap off, walked over to hand it to Jim, and walked back to lean against the pillar by the kitchen as he drank his own.

That had caught his interest: Blair keeping his distance, giving him time to think. It was something Detective Sandburg had learned that the grad student hadn't really known how to do, adjusting personal distance to influence your listener's reactions. Blair didn't usually use this with him; most of the time, as a cop or a guide, he was right there beside him, within arms' reach.

But this time he'd stood across the room, drinking his beer slowly, leaning back against the pillar with one leg straight and the other knee bent so that his old jeans caressed his ass softly, one hand loose against his leg and the other wrapped around the bottle.

Waiting for an answer.

He'd tried to turn it into a joke, which he'd known instantly was the wrong thing to do. He should have taken the question seriously. Blair had always taken his questions seriously, and his complaints, and his grouching. He deserved the same respect for this, even if the question had been implied delicately by the tone of Blair's voice rather than in anything more overt.

"Well, let's see. I already have the flowered apron --"

Something he couldn't define had flickered across Blair's face, and the hand leaning on his thigh had clenched a little and loosened again.

Blair's hands weren't small. They were muscular and capable, well-kept, the logical and proper and aesthetic finish to his strong, well-shaped arms.

"Not all marriages have defined societal roles, Jim. Not all of them have to follow what someone else says is right."

He'd felt the wall around his heart tremble, as if it had metamorphosed from concrete to silk and Blair's breath had stirred it. But he'd been hurt so often, so badly. Blair knew about Carolyn, Laura, Lila and Veronica. He'd never known about Stan, or Jerry, or Nick, or Tony, or any of the others.

He'd been hurt so badly in his relationships with women, but that had never gone beyond a certain place inside himself. Even though he loved women, loved their stubbornness and their generosity and their sweet scents and tastes, they'd only gotten into the outer rooms of his inner castle and had never seen the rest of it. The men had gotten into the inner rooms; one or two had made it to the center though none to the innermost sanctuary there, and when they'd gone he'd felt the gaping scars within himself as if he'd had holes blasted into his heart. It had taken a long time, and a lot of work, to rebuild himself, to put together a sort of split-level castle with a lot of room for friends and a private tower for himself in its midst, but he'd done it.

And with a few words Blair had shaken that tower, transformed it to a cloth tent with the entrance flap open to the breeze.

"Don't you think we're playing house enough as it is?" he'd asked.

"I think we could be better for each other than we are."

Blair's eyes looked deep, pools of ocean far from shore. He could drown in them and never come out again, so easily.

"And when you get bored?" He'd kept the question casual, not wanting to refer more obviously to Blair's own scattershot romantic history.

"I haven't been bored with you in five years, Jim. Angry, confused, and frustrated at times, but never bored. What makes you think that would happen now?"

"Because I'm who I am, Chief. Basically, I'm a pretty boring person. I go to work, I come home, I watch television or go to see the Jags, I play poker with the people I work with and I go camping when I get the chance. I don't jaunt off to the far corners of the world to explore strange sights and meet people; I did than in the Rangers. Now all I want to do is live my life."

"And this would change?"

Everything would change. It wasn't that simple.

His thoughts must have shown on his face, though he tried to keep his expression as neutral as he could.

"That's your answer?" Blair asked, his voice holding a faint tremor.

"It's all the answer you're going to get. Sorry."

"So am I, Jim."

And Blair had turned and gone into his room and had not come out again that night....

The cotton sheets crumpled in his arms, releasing their burden of scent, and he felt his heart throb. Then he felt a deeper, lower throb, as the aroma reached into his body and twisted away` what little control he had, so very easily, and he could imagine the touch of fingers instead of cool sheets, and warm lips, and the sweet hot rush --

Now he'd have more laundry to do.

He stood, with difficulty, dropped the pile of sheets on the bed, stripped off his jeans and underwear -- and the shirt, he'd hit the front shirttails with that unanticipated salvo -- and threw them onto the pile. The muscles in his legs trembled, as if he'd run for ten miles instead of just walking up stairs, but he ignored them. He took a fast shower, with colder water than usual. After he put on clean clothes, he gathered the pile of laundry and traipsed down to the washing machine in the basement to throw in the load.

The machine had run that morning, with a small load of clothes, some of which he didn't recognize at all. Those had to belong to Dan.

Jim sighed. He couldn't dislike Dan Rydell; it wasn't the man's fault he'd walked blindfolded into a minefield of cop-partner difficulties. He put the wet clothes into the dryer on permanent press, threw the sheets and his own clothes into the washer, and decided to go around the corner for lunch at Wally's Diner. It wouldn't take long, and after the clothes were dry he could take them with him to return to Dan.

***

Blair pulled the car over into a vacant parking lot and let the anger and frustration pour out.

Shit. Did Jim have to be such a prick? It felt like he was in training for some new combined sports event, the Sentinel Prickness or something: first part, reject the Guide, second, lay the sportscaster, third, deny it all.

Well, not exactly. Jim wasn't denying anything or admitting to anything. He was just being Jim, playing Ranger games on his partner. Hide and seek. Tag, you're it. Keepaway. Pretending that it didn't matter that he'd rather wrap himself around Casey McCall than Blair Sandburg.

He didn't know that. Not for certain. He was jumping to conclusions again. Hadn't he learned anything at the academy?

Item one: Jim had turned him down, months earlier, although they'd been full partners in everything but physical passion for years.

Item two: Jim, apparently -- from last night's evidence -- wasn't a stranger to the horizontal bop with another man.

Item three: Based on the available evidence, Jim's preferred physical type for a lover was someone near his own height with long legs, a slender build, and beautiful eyes.

Those three items might have provided a basis for several syllogisms, if Blair had been back in Philosophy 256, Critical Thinking. None of them would have shown him the truth, in any way he framed them. He couldn't base his actions on his observations alone; he had to be missing something.

Independent verification.

He needed to talk with someone who knew Jim about this, without letting the cat out of the bag so far he couldn't catch it by the tail. Someone who was discreet, knowledgeable, experienced, and friendly.

Only one man he knew fit all those qualifications. He punched the number into his cell phone.

"Joel, it's Blair."

"Hey, Blair, how's it going?"

"I'm not interrupting anything important, am I? I could call back later."

"Naw, just sitting here putting my feet up on my day off. You okay? You sound a little --"

"Well, now that you mention it..."

"What is it, romantic troubles again?"

"You could say that. Yeah. You could say that."

"So what's on your mind?"

"Well, There's someone I really care about, you know, like really."

"That's good news, isn't it?" Joel's warm voice comforted him, like a cup of hot tea on a cold day.

"What?"

"You found someone you really care about. That's good news."

"Yes, but that someone went and slept with somebody else, and I got mad so I went off and slept with someone -- a friend, casual, you know -- and now I'm not sure how to straighten things out."

"Hmph. You sure you want to straighten things out? Maybe you and this friend have more in common than you do with the one that you care about."

It sounded as if Joel was getting the players confused. Blair would have to clarify the situation.

"Actually, we do, but we live in different cities and I'm not that good at long-distance things."

"And the person you really care about is local."

"Yeah."

"Well." Blair could hear Joel taking a long breath, thinking this over, maybe even noticing that in the whole conversation he'd managed not to use gender-specific pronouns. "I think you're going to have to confront this someone you care about and say just how you feel, and then see where it goes from there. Don't put it off too long, Blair; it's going to be awkward as hell, but you'll probably lose out altogether if you wait too long -- especially if that someone is seeing somebody else."

"You think it'll work?"

"It's got a better chance of working than not saying anything at all."

"True. Awkward as hell doesn't even begin to describe it, Joel. Try potentially explosive."

"Hey, you know how to deal with a bomb; we've done that already. You stay calm, you make sure you have the right wire before you cut it, and you don't let yourself get distracted with anything that doesn't matter."

"And if it doesn't work?"

"Run like hell." Joel chuckled. "Blair, Blair, I have faith in you. Always have had. You're not going to let me down, are you?" He could've sworn he could hear Joel smiling into the phone.

"I'll try not to, man. Thanks."

"No problem. Let me know how it turns out, okay? And take care of yourself."

"I will."

***

The crew was well into filming the Special Olympics when Dan saw Blair standing on the sidelines, cheering for a runner limping over the finish line last. Every participant in every event received a medal in the Special Olympics; it was as much of an achievement for each of the participants to have gotten that far.

"I know just how he feels," Blair said as Dan walked over to him. Blair was still watching the runner being hugged by his friends and family. "Sometimes coming in last is the best you can do."

"Sometimes coming in at all is enough," Dan said, concerned. "Are you all right?"

"I've got to talk to Jim."

Dan leaned back against a fence to let the crowd pass on its way to the next event. Blair ducked between people to join him.

"It's probably a good idea."

"Well, I'm not at my most tactful right now. In fact," Blair glanced around at the crowd, "it's probably a good thing that I'm in the middle of a situation where I should not start swearing like a dock worker."

"I'm sure everyone would have a great deal of respect for your well-rounded vocabulary."

"Not."

"True." Dan had a strong feeling that Blair was too close to the edge as it was. "What happened with you? I thought you just had to take that guy down to the station."

"We did. I screwed up; I started twitting Jim about Casey, indirectly."

"How do you twit someone indirectly? I would've thought twitting was a pretty direct activity."

Blair bit his lip. "You know the drill. You must have gone through it with Casey at some time; he and Jim are too much alike." Dan nodded. "Jim got mad, and then he got quiet and remote, and I had to try to get through that and it didn't work. And then I got sarcastic."

"That didn't help."

"Yeah. And I remembered at the wrong time what we didn't do this morning." Blair's eyes were rueful. "We didn't change Jim's bed."

"Aha. Your bed --"

"Downstairs, a single bed in the room by the kitchen."

"Right." Dan felt himself getting the slightest bit nervous. It wasn't that he had anything to fear, of course, from a highly trained police officer who was about the size of Sally and had many more muscles, and who might be a little peeved that Dan had been sleeping in his bed when they hadn't even been introduced at that point. Of course not. Nothing to worry about at all.

"Oh, don't worry," Blair said, apparently reading Dan's nervousness correctly. "He's not going to take anything out on you. He'll be very polite, if anything. I'm the one who's going to have to deal with him." A rueful grin and head shake told Dan that 'dealing with' Jim Ellison was old hat, even if this situation wasn't. "Hey, I can remember a time at a society party, when I walked in on him in a closet making happy with the main suspect."

"That must've been fun."

"He didn't even notice me that time. Last night, he noticed." The skin around Blair's eyes crinkled with an unexpected humor. "At least I know what I'm dealing with this time. I mean, I'm pretty sure Casey wasn't drugging Jim."

"I think we can be absolutely certain of that," Dan said, "considering that I have to practically bribe him to get him to take an aspirin."

They had left the track-and-field area behind and were walking slowly toward the basketball courts, where Jeremy was getting background information for Dan's next few interviews. Sally stood by the side of the court, dividing her time between her clipboard and watching Simon Banks and a teenage boy who looked like a younger Simon work with a group of children, coaching them on shooting hoops. After a few minutes, Sally handed her clipboard and folders to Jeremy and took the ball away from Simon, who was so startled he tripped over his feet. She dribbled it a couple of times, turned and threw a perfect free throw. A little girl in a wheelchair cheered, and the rest of the kids joined in. The teenager's face split in a delighted grin. "Show me how you did that," he asked.

Sally smiled, a real smile, not the office-politics smile she showed at the station. "It's all in the way you hold your hands on the ball. Take a look." She walked over to the girl in the wheelchair and put her hands on the ball and guided her, and the ball sailed up and through the hoop again as if it were on a charted course. The teenager grinned at Simon, and Simon nodded and tried to look as if he wasn't impressed as hell.

"She was on the national women's intercollegiate basketball all-stars team before her knee went out," Dan said quietly to Blair.

"It shows. Does she ever play?"

Dan shook his head. "This is the first time I've ever seen her with a ball in her hands."

"What's she like, as a person?" Blair crossed his arms, the first defensive gesture Dan had seen him make. "Simon's been through a lot."

"Ambitious. She works hard, and she's good at her work. A little, um, eager to improve her point spread, if it's going to get her to where she wants to be."

"Not bad. Simon's going to see through all that, and he won't care as long as it's office politics and not personal."

"It's not personal. Casey hurt her badly, a while back, and she's never taken it out on him at work."

"Oh?" Blair's eyebrows went up.

"Yeah. They're over it now."

"Uh-huh." Dan watched Blair observing Simon, who looked at Sally the way he himself must have once looked at Rebecca. He hoped with all his might that this time Sally wouldn't make her sex life into a competitive sport. Maybe she'd learned her lesson at the station; certainly, she was behaving differently with Simon than she'd behaved with Casey. He wondered if the Sally he was seeing was actually the real Sally, the person she didn't feel safe being at CSC.

Actually, Dan wondered, how many of us do show our true faces to one another at _Sports Night_? If Casey had never really truly seen him, was that Casey's fault? Or his? Or a no-fault, no-harm-no-foul matter that had more to do with self-preservation than friendship?

Jeremy came over to talk with Sally, too quietly for him to overhear, and she handed the ball off to Simon with a sweet smile, said goodbye to the girl in the wheelchair and left for somewhere with Jeremy. Simon stood and looked after her for a moment, almost wistfully, until his son knocked the ball out of his hands, feinted and passed it to one of the other Special Olympians, who may not have made it to Harvard but who could dribble a basketball like a Harlem Globetrotter. An interesting and inclusive game broke out on the floor, as everyone passed to everyone else and they all aimed shots at the same basket.

He heard Blair catch his breath and turned to see Jim Ellison walking toward them, carrying a plastic shopping bag.

"I thought you might like these back," Jim said, a mild expression on his face as he handed Dan the bag. "I don't think they're my size."

"Thanks." Dan felt his own breath catching in his throat. "Sorry for the inconvenience."

Jim waved it off with one hand. "Not a problem. I had to do the sheets today anyway, or your things might still be there for a while." He turned his shoulder at a slightly oblique angle to where Blair stood, as if Blair were part of the wall, something to be leaned against at best and ignored at worst but nothing dangerous at all.

It was amazing, the way people acted around each other, Dan thought. How had Jim managed to say so much with so few words, and snub his roommate at the same time? Dan cast a nervous glance toward Blair and saw his eyes blazing, over a cynical smile.

"Actually, I was going to finish the load of wash for you while I made dinner, so it wouldn't have taken that long," he said to Dan. "Regardless of what Jim tells you, I'm pretty methodical when it comes to most things. I had to be, to get my degree."

"Um, I can see where that would help," Dan said into the suddenly heavy air. "You were studying architecture, I think you said?"

"Anthropology." The word fell into the space between them as if it were lead. "Cultural anthropology. You know," Blair said casually, "I've been approached by a publisher who's interested in having me adapt my dissertation into a textbook."

Was it Dan's imagination or had Jim just gone so still that he was barely breathing?

"That's great."

"I think so," Blair said, still casual. "With all the problems in the news about police departments, there appears to be a good market for a structuralist examination of quasi-militaristic closed societies, one that considers both their internal communications and their relationships with other organizations."

The color was rising in Jim's cheeks, just enough to make him look as if Alison hadn't powdered him down enough before going under the hot studio lights.

"Wouldn't there be some problem with that, since you're part of the closed society now?" Dan asked.

"Since I'm Dr. Blair Sandburg, it's no problem as long as I keep publishing what I know. It's not that uncommon for someone to continue to be deeply involved with their subject matter, as long as they approach it with a sufficiently academic viewpoint. Look at Isaac Bonewits, for instance."

"Who's Isaac Bonewits?"

Jim turned, and surveyed Blair as if he were an artwork Jim wasn't sure he wanted to buy.

"Archdruid Emeritus of the United States, and founder of Ar nDraiocht Fein. It's the world's largest neopagan Druid organization. His book, _Real Magic_,' is a reworking of his thesis for a degree in magic and thaumaturgy from the University of California."

"Sandburg, you're making that up," Jim said. "You can't be serious."

"See for yourself. It's on the second bookshelf past the door in the loft, on the left, about a third of the way over, next to the new biography of Burton." Blair shifted his stance, as if it all didn't matter, but his eyes snapped, answering the intensity on Jim's face.

Dan felt a shiver crawl up his spine, and wished vainly for divine intervention from any available and reasonably friendly deity. This was worse than trying to manage a round-table discussion between NFL and AFL linebackers the week before the Superbowl.

Jim shrugged condescendingly, his arms crossed. "Why would I care about what some guy who started a weird religion thinks about magic?"

"Well, let's see," Blair rolled his weight from his heels to his toes and back, and Dan held his breath. He'd seen Casey do that when he was about to lose it and couldn't hold still. Blair seemed to have better control, though. "Bonewits did a nice, systematic summary of the laws of magic. Now, you may not care about them, Jim, but they affect your life all the same."

"Oh? Name three laws of magic that affect my life. I assume there are at least three in your list?"

Jim's eyes seemed to be ready to throw sparks. Dan took a step backward, and hoped the sparks didn't ricochet. He'd thought it was bad enough getting between Rebecca and Steve Sisco, or between Casey and Sally, but he could see now that those were minor-league skirmishes, if for no other reason than that none of the people involved were armed.

"No problem." Blair ticked them off on his fingers. "Law of Knowledge: understanding brings control, or knowledge is power. If you don't think you're affected by that, go back to the Academy. Law of Association: if two things have something in common, what they have in common can be used to control both of them. You use that one ever time you walk into an interview room."

"That's two."

"Law of Pragmatism: if it works, it's true. That could apply to anything, including your truck, Jim. And the Law of Identification: if you know enough about another entity, you can become that entity." Blair drew a deep breath, and Dan braced himself for an explosion, but the next two words were very quiet. "David Lash."

No explosion, but Jim's expression -- his whole body's stance -- changed subtly. Dan could almost see the muscles hardening like interlocking panels on the Batmobile, shielding him from danger. Jim's voice, when he spoke, sounded remote. "Maybe you should recommend it to the Commandant of the Academy as a reference."

"I might," Blair said lightly, "since they're already using his cult identification matrix to sort out supposed cults from small misunderstood religions. It's a kind of checklist," he turned to Dan, "that measures things like the amount of control the leader of the group has over the rest of the group, the kind of indoctrination new members get and whether they're discouraged from staying in touch with friends and family, and evaluates whether these are dangerous or not. Very helpful."

"It sounds like it," Dan said. He cast around in vain for an intervening deity -- at this point he'd almost welcome Loki or Coyote, even Wile E. Coyote -- and saw Jeremy coming toward them with a clipboard. "You know, I'd like to get a copy of that book. It might be interesting to see how the laws of magic affect sports coverage."

"Hey, no problem. It's a little hard to find, but I'll see what I can do. I have a beat-up loaner copy you can take with you, if you want." Blair turned away from Jim far enough, as he faced Dan, to give Dan a wink.

"Dan," Jeremy said, "Sally wants you to come to the VIP tent to talk with Mohammed Ali and Arnold Schwartzenegger."

"You're joking." Dan's jaw dropped.

"No, I'm not. Ali just arrived with his bodyguards. Arnold's been here all the time, with some of the kids; his mother-in-law started the Special Olympics, you know. Sally's got Casey there, and she wants you as well so you can do a fast rundown of the history of the games and work the interviews with him. Here's the background." He handed Dan the clipboard and turned to Blair. "Sorry. I don't think you can come to this."

"It's okay," Blair said. "I'll get in on the basketball game here." He shot Jim a dark-edged look and jogged off onto the court. Jim gave Dan an ironic nod, one eyebrow hiked toward his hairline, and went into the game on the other team.

Dan put his hand on Jeremy's shoulder as they hurried toward the VIP tent. "Jeremy, my friend, did you know you're an avatar of deity and an answer to fervent prayer?"

"Nice to know I'm fulfilling some purpose in the world," Jeremy said, his smile wary. "You were starting to look like a bone of contention."

"More like an innocent bystander."

Jeremy snorted.

"Okay, not so innocent bystander. But thanks for interceding."

"Hey, that's what we avatars of deity do best."

"Wait a minute." Dan stopped him, took out a notebook and scribbled something on a corner of the notes, then tore it off and handed it to Jeremy.

"What's this?"

"The name and email address of the coach I interviewed who works only with people with disabilities. She has several students who can't hear. I thought Louise might like to talk with her."

Jeremy folded the scrap of paper carefully and tucked it into his wallet. "Dan, she is going to love this. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

"No problem. Consider it my offering to you as an avatar of deity."

"I'll have to remember to be one more often. How, exactly am I supposed to know when an avatar is needed?"

"Just listen for the fervent prayers."

"Right. Fervent prayers. By the way, what deity am I the avatar of?"

"Anybody but Wile E. Coyote."

"Wile E. Coyote is a deity?"

"Well, not exactly. He's an archetype with an extremely poor self-image but great determination, considering that everything he does fails. Sort of the Saint Jude of cartoons, in a twisted kind of way."

"Saint Jude?"

"Catholic saint of last resorts and lost causes, according to Natalie. She told me once that he used to get her through geometry exams."

"Ah. Right. Since I've got the choice, I think I'd rather be an avatar of Kokopelli, who traveled the Southwest bringing good news and music. Oh, and the VIP tent is over there."

"Great! Talk to you later."

***

Jeremy was never sure afterward how they'd all gotten invited to stay for the dinner with the Special Olympics participants and their families. Maybe it was because of the girl in the wheelchair, who wouldn't let go of Sally's hand after Sally had shown her how to throw a perfect free thrown -- and the girl had done it three times without fail. Maybe it was because Dan and Casey's interview with Mohammed Ali and Arnold ran longer than expected, and they continued talking on the way to the dinner. Maybe the organizers had an extra pizza or twenty.

However it went, they were there, on both sides of a long table, in little Balkanized groups. Dan and Blair on one side of the table, across from Darryl (whom he'd figured out was Simon's son), Simon and Sally. A couple of lost volunteers sat between them and the next grouping, which included himself, Casey and Jim, across from each other, and three more volunteers. He didn't know where Alison or the rest of the crew had gone, but they probably had found a nice quiet pub somewhere.

Quiet wasn't the word for this dinner. It was like being in the lunch room at PS 35 all over again. He could barely hear himself think. Fortunately, Louise had taught him to lipread years ago; he didn't have to hear in order to know what the people around him were saying.

It was illuminating.

Darryl was telling Blair and Dan about the canoe trip he'd just finished with the Explorer Scouts. Simon was taking advantage of this to tell Sally how much he'd enjoyed the day, and to ask her whether she'd like to spend the evening with him after he dropped Darryl off at his mother's house. Sally, who looked pleased and relaxed, told Simon she'd be looking forward to it as soon as she checked in with the station in New York, to make sure they were set for the night on coverage and didn't need anything else. Darryl noticed his father's conversation and told Blair, "It's about time." Blair grinned, and smothered the grin behind a soft drink, and Dan smiled and asked Darryl about his college plans.

All quiet there, more or less. Jeremy turned his attention to the other half of the party.

Jim and Casey might as well have been in their own world. Jim was keeping a weather eye on the crowd, which Jeremy figured was probably a reflex, but his attention was on the story Casey was telling him about the Cut Man's broadcast from Atlantic City. Casey was leaning a little too far to the left as he talked, as if he were trying to listen in on Dan and Blair's conversation. If he'd had a few beers, he wouldn't have been able to sit at that angle without falling off the chair.

"Isn't that right, Jeremy?" Casey said.

"Hunh? Oh, yes. Absolutely." Jeremy had no idea what was going on, but agreement seemed safest.

And then, as he listened to Casey tell Jim about the sale of CSC, he noticed that Jim's lips were moving, very slightly, but not in time with his chewing, and he realized what was happening.

Jim was reading Blair's lips, but he couldn't quite do it without moving his own.

Louise had pointed this out to Jeremy years earlier, when she'd taught him to do it. A lot of people did it if they didn't have a lot of experience at lipreading; it was a habit that went away with time.

And Blair was saying something about going back to the hotel with Dan to watch television.

Jim stood up suddenly. "Casey, would you like to see the loft?"

Casey's face lit up, though Jeremy could see he was trying to tone down his reaction. "That'd be great." He pushed aside the too-soft ice cream provided for the banquet. "And I'll take care of dessert; you name the place."

Jim smiled at Casey, and looked aside at Jeremy. "It was good to meet you today. Take care of yourself." His voice was just loud enough to cut through the crowd without carrying too far.

"You too," Jeremy said, wishing he could say some of what he was feeling without getting himself into trouble. He watched them walk past the crowded tables toward the exit. As he turned back to the rest of his own dinner, he glanced aside. Dan's lips were pressed together, in that shape that meant he was hurt and unwilling to talk about it. Blair's face could have been carved of oak, its rounded angles hardened into angry solidity. The only other person who seemed to have noticed this was Darryl, who looked worried as he watched Blair's expression. He said something to Blair that Jeremy didn't catch, and Blair softened and replied, and Darryl looked less tense. Simon and Sally appeared oblivious to the whole thing, and were murmuring something to each other that made Jeremy think he wouldn't see Sally again until tomorrow, and that she'd be much more relaxed than usual by then.

They were leaving now. Sally leaned toward him over the table and said, "Run the tape and set up for voice-overs in the morning, and make sure we cover the last events at the Olympics trials." He nodded, and she smiled at him sweetly and left, Simon following her through the crowd like a protective shadow -- a shadow with a smile as wide as her own. Darryl shook Jeremy's hand, grinned at him, and followed his father out.

Dan leaned toward him, over the empty chairs where the volunteers had sat. "You all right? What are you doing tonight?"

"Watching tape, and setting up for tomorrow."

"You can come with us, if you want. We're going to hit a movie." Dan's hand was on Jeremy's shoulder, and his face was earnest. "I don't want you to feel left out of everything because Natalie isn't here." Behind him, Blair nodded in agreement.

"That's okay. I'm going to be calling her soon, after the show, and, well, I do have this work to do." He managed a smile, wishing he could find the words to tell Dan how it felt to see him at odds with Casey. "Thanks anyway." It wasn't the time or the place, not with several hundred loud diners within earshot.

Dan's hand rubbed his shoulder for a moment. "It'll blow over, eventually. We can still work together."

"I know. But it still hurts to see it," Jeremy managed.

Dan nodded. "It bites. But worse things have happened and we've survived them all." He winked at Jeremy and started through the crowd.

Blair stayed behind a moment to hand him something, which turned out to be a business card for Detective Blair Sandburg, with several phone numbers on it. "This one's the cell. If you need to talk, about anything, call. Please."

"I don't want to make things any more of a mess than they already are," Jeremy said slowly.

"You won't." Blair sighed, and the lines in his face deepened. "There's no way you could mess up what's happening with Jim and me any worse than it already is, and you might have some ideas on how to put Casey and Dan back together."

"But ..." Jeremy blinked.

"Jim's been my partner for a long time. This kind of thing happens with him. We'll get past it. I don't think it's as simple as that for Dan or Casey."

"It's hard to tell," Jeremy admitted. "They've been through some really rough times the past year -- we all have. I don't want to think they've hit the breaking point."

"I can tell you, they haven't." Blair's eyes smiled. "Not from Dan's viewpoint, at least. I've heard more about Casey McCall in the past day or so than I ever expected."

"Ah." Jeremy noticed Dan standing by the door, waiting. "Go off to the movie. I'll be fine."

"Okay."

"See you tomorrow?"

"If I can make it, I'll be there, trying to keep the peace."

"You and me both." And at that they both smiled, and Blair left.

Jeremy dug out his Palm Pilot and brought up the flow chart program. He knew he'd have to have all the permutations of personality sorted out before he talked with Natalie, or she'd think he wasn't sharing properly. And then there'd be punishment. Not that that was entirely a bad thing ... as long as Natalie was involved.

***

"I thought you bought dessert." Jim went up on one elbow, the only way he could see Casey's face.

Casey glanced up at him with the delighted smile of a demented angel. "I did. I'll be right back."

Jim closed his eyes and listened to Casey's footsteps on the open stairs, moving across the room. The sound of a paper bag rustling. The footsteps returning.

When he opened his eyes, Casey stood next to the bed, still smiling, holding in one hand a can of whipped cream and in the other a can of chocolate syrup. "Would you rather eat dessert or be dessert? Your choice."

***

This time it was fiercer. When they stopped moving, both were breathing deeply, drawing the air into their lungs in huge gasps, each holding whatever could be reached of the other's sweat-slicked body like a lifeline in a hurricane.

"I needed that," Dan said unevenly.

"The hell of it is," Blair said, "I know it wouldn't be like this with Jim. But you're here, and you know the same thing about Casey."

"Yes." Dan licked the sweet-salt stickyness off Blair's thigh. "And you know what? Right now, I don't want the complication that's Casey. This is simpler."

"And it feels good."

"It feels damn good."

Blair ran his fingers through Dan's sleek hair. "I could stand to feel good again. How about you?"

Dan licked his way up Blair's side -- the least furry path that he could find -- and let his lips do the talking for him. By the time he reached Blair's throat, he could feel Blair's skin shiver under his fingertips.

It wasn't a game, but it was. Everything was, and wasn't. Dan rolled Blair onto his back and teased his knees apart; there were the pale strong goalpost thighs, and the sweet target between them. It didn't matter what the game was called, because he wasn't keeping score, and putting the ball over or between the goalpost wasn't the point.

The point was Blair's rough breath, and the wild depth of his gaze as his arms reached out to steady Dan, and the touch of his hands on Dan's chest and hips, pulling him in, drawing him to the point where both of them could run across home plate, hand in hand, together.

Goalposts, home plate, whatthefuck. It didn't matter. He was safe with Blair, safer than he'd ever be with Casey, no matter what happened. He wasn't going to give up this safe harbor yet. No. Not a yachting metaphor; he wasn't even going to get started on that.

Dan slicked on the condom and sank into Blair, slower this time, Blair rocking under him making little urgent moans and deeper passionate grunts between kisses.

It wasn't scoring. It wasn't. He wasn't thinking of sports at all, or of sportscasting, or of Casey.

And, not thinking of Casey, purposely not thinking of Casey McCall and his long, slender limbs and chiseled chest, Dan came again.

***

"That should do it." Jeremy rewound the tape and listened for a moment. "Right. See you at the airport at nine."

"Nine? Yeah." Casey blinked a moment as if he hadn't gotten enough sleep. "I'll be there."

"You'd better be," Sally purred behind him. "I don't have enough in the budget to authorize a search and rescue party."

"I'll keep that in mind." Casey withstood Sally's down-and-up perusal. "In the meantime, I'm going to see a little more of that great outdoors I keep hearing about."

"Oh, good. The West Coast won't be wasted because you'll be there." It was Dan, wandering in with his hair combed, in a fresh shirt. Jeremy glanced from him to Casey and realized that Casey was wearing another totally unsuitable shirt in a chartreuse that made his complexion look yellowed, like old newspaper.

"And what are your plans today?" Casey asked, running his hand through his hair as if that might make a difference in its general disorder.

"After I finish my work," Dan nodded toward Jeremy, "I'm going to tour the city's cultural highlights. Perhaps it's time for a West Coast Renaissance."

"This sounds like a charming idea -- the Renaissance as matched bookends -- but I think I have something to do elsewhere." Sally beamed at them generally. "Feel free to let me know how your escapades between the Dark Ages and Enlightenment turn out. Jeremy, call if you need me. Otherwise, I'll see you at the airport. My ride is here." She waved through the glass wall at Simon Banks, picked up her coat from a chair, and left, her heels clipping on the hard floors and echoing into the distance.

Casey checked his watch, picked up his jacket and was almost at the door when Dan said, "Don't forget to pack your toothbrush, if you can find it."

Casey waved over his shoulder and kept going. The door swung shut. Dan sat down, a little harder than he might have expected, in the empty swivel chair and let out a breath. "What's the weather report?"

"Right now, no real change in the upper atmosphere. There's still a lot of movement going on, but it's hard to tell if the cumulus clouds will do more than form thunderheads. It might even blow past us and rain somewhere else." Jeremy kept his hands busy with the control panel. "Of course, I could be completely wrong."

"Did you talk with Natalie last night?"

"Uh-huh." Jeremy passed Dan a rundown sheet. "Here's the preliminaries for today's events; we'll tape them and send them to New York as is, and they can cut and paste. All I need from you are voice-overs, a little commentary on the way the whole thing looks."

"No problem. Give me half an hour to put something together." Dan picked up a clipboard and a pen. "So," he said, writing busily, "what did Natalie say?"

"I didn't tell her."

Dan stopped writing. "Why?"

"Cowardice. I couldn't do it."

"Right. I don't believe you."

"Dan, you and Casey have had arguments before. He'll still want to work with you when you're back in New York."

"Probably, but that doesn't mean I want to work with him." Dan resumed writing, his hand moving quickly across the page.

"You don't?"

"Let's say that nothing is certain. Show me the finish of yesterday's 440."

"Okay." Jeremy brought the clip up on the monitor. "Anything else?"

"High jump would be nice, and broad jump."

"This isn't about Rebecca, is it?"

"Not any more."

"High jump on one. Broad jump on two."

"Good."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Carry an umbrella and stick to high ground."

***

"Oh, man. Just catch that view." Casey put a hand onto a nearby rock to steady himself and gazed back at the trail they'd just climbed. He wasn't dizzy, but it had been a long time since he'd been this high up without a building underneath himself.

"I am," Jim murmured. "Great view."

"I meant the landscape."

"Uh-huh." Jim grinned, and Casey grinned back. Not a complicated guy, this Jim Ellison. Knowledgeable about sports, easy to be with, fairly laid back -- except where his partner was concerned. Whoa, boy. That wasn't a place he felt like going while he was several thousand feet up the side of a mountain with someone who could easily pose for any magazine he wanted if he ever showed up in Manhattan. Oh, perhaps _Highlights for Children_, Charlie's current nanny's favorite, wouldn't want a photo of Jim to grace its pages, but the rest of the publishing world would have its tongue dragging the sidewalk and its contracts under his nose in a New York millisecond.

"You're not thinking about the mountains, either," Jim said.

"It showed?"

"It showed."

No, Jim wasn't complicated, but the situation he was in looked as if it was more of a snake's nest than the station could be. It was a good thing that Detective Sandburg was an easygoing man, not one to take offense easily or hold grudges, considering how he'd found Casey with his partner in about as flagrante a delicto as could be imagined.

But wasn't Sandburg being pretty flagrant about his fling with Dan? Or was that the same thing?

"You're thinking again."

"You could tell?"

"Mm-hmm. Wheels spinning and all." Jim handed him a water bottle. "Something I said?"

"Thanks. No, no, nothing like that." Casey felt an itch between his shoulder blades that he knew he couldn't reach to scratch. It wouldn't matter if he could reach it; it wasn't that kind of itch. This wasn't the itch that meant he was getting heat rash, but the one that told him something was going wrong with people he knew, and he had to find a way to help fix it. His back had been itching all the time he'd been dueling with Dana over whether they should be together or not; it had itched when Natalie had fought with Jeremy and when Natalie herself had been hurt by Christian Patrick.

Sometimes the itch would ease a bit if he could think his way around it. He tried thinking about Jim in the bar, talking over the baseball scores, and that didn't itch. He tried thinking of the Olympics trials, and Jim dashing across the field to stop an assault; that didn't itch. He tried thinking of Jim's hands, and what enjoyable things they could do, and suddenly his back itched as if he'd rolled naked in a field of poison ivy -- and he couldn't see Jim any more in his mind, only Dan's hands typing on the computer, or shuffling news copy, or patting him on the shoulder when he won at poker.

"Jim --"

Jim raised an eyebrow. "Why do I think 'we have to talk' will be the next words you say?"

"Because you're right. Is there any place we can sit down? My knees are starting to shake from the altitude."

"Sure." Jim pointed around the curve of the mountainside to a small cave mouth with a wide enough area that they could sit, in the sun, and relax for a while. "It's not the altitude, it's the lack of air conditioning."

"It might be the lack of good coffee, but we're not lacking it, which is a very good thing." Casey opened the small travel thermos and poured himself a cup. Jim shook his head at the thermos and drank more water.

"So?"

"I don't like coming between you and your partner. It's not a good thing."

"You're not. Don't worry about it."

"Yes, I am. Haven't you seen the look on his face? We're messing up what you and he have together, and I can't keep doing it."

"Casey." Jim finished drinking and wiped the water off his mouth with the back of his hand. "I like you. You have to know that. But you've got to understand, you're not what's messing things up between me and Blair. I am." He stared across the valley as he swung one leg over the edge almost idly. "I can pretty much guarantee that any problems going on here are mine."

"You know, my producer, Dana, said that same thing one time during the show -- about any problems being caused by her?"

"And?"

"A 24-pound frozen turkey that was thawing fell out of the lighting grid onto the anchor deck."

"For real?"

"For real." Casey nodded solemnly as Jim grinned. "Okay, I'm not the cause, but I'm sure not helping the solution."

Jim shook his head, his eyes twinkling. "You're making me feel wonderful, Casey. Don't denigrate that. Feeling good is important."

"Yes, it is." The coffee was cooling rapidly. "I'm not putting it down. I've enjoyed this time as much as you have, but I think it ends when I leave tonight, doesn't it? I mean, you're not going to be hopping on the red-eye on weekends to see me, are you?"

Jim shook his head. "It's not likely. Our schedules don't mesh too well." He emptied the water bottle and closed the cap. "But aren't we screwing up your friendship with Dan?"

Casey nodded. "Bookends. That's what we are, you and I. Fucking bookends. Literally, in fact."

"I'm not that worried about Blair; we've been through worse." Jim sent what might have been a glare out toward a distant cloud. "Sooner or later he'll yell at me and I'll yell at him, and we'll sort it out. At least, I hope we will. That's the way we've always done it. But you and Dan --"

"We don't live together, but we might as well. We spend more time together working than most married people do with each other for any reason. The problem is," Casey said, handing the thermos back to Jim to put in his backpack, "I was married, and Dan knows that part of the reason it broke up is that I chose to work with him in Texas a few years ago instead of going to California to a national show."

"Your wife didn't understand. Got that. Been there. She threw out the shirt." Jim frowned. "But why's that a problem now?"

Casey hung his head a little, pretending to watch the way the rocks under his feet receded instead of feeling ashamed of himself. He didn't have to explain this, he told himself, but he knew he'd feel better if one other person knew. "Jim, have you ever done something for yourself, something just to keep you sane that you knew other people wouldn't understand?"

"Oh, yeah. Cops get lots of opportunities. More than you know." Jim's lips twisted into a rueful smile. "There were the gay bars with the dark corners, and then there were the undercover cases that got too comfortable." Jim stretched his arms over his head, unlocking his shoulders. "It's so easy to be someone else when you get to do the things your real life won't allow."

"I didn't have that excuse. Undercover, I mean. It didn't start out to be that much, just a blow job in a locker room after a post-game interview, or a hand job somewhere else, and then word got around, quietly, and I had a lot of action." Casey's laugh sounded bitter, even to him. "I saw more action for a while than any three fighter planes. Just a different way to fly." He caught Jim's eye. "No, not drugs. Just --"

"The way we were flying on Friday night."

"Yes." Casey shrugged. "It got so good that I couldn't turn it down. I'd finish the show, go down to the stadium, get it off with the guys, and go home. You know the funny thing? Lisa didn't mind. She figured it didn't count as long as I wasn't with another woman. So I kept going."

"And?" Jim's eyes were steady on his.

"And then I started to realize that the guy for whom I'd given up California and Late Night meant a lot more to me than all the faceless fucks and sucks in all the locker rooms in the world, only I couldn't tell him because -- because -- oh, there was a lot of stuff going on at CSC for about a year or so. Everything was crazy. I had a crush on Dana --"

"The one with the turkey?"

"Right. And Dan had it really bad for this woman named Rebecca who worked in our building. I didn't think he'd look at me twice."

"You thought he was ...?"

"Danny's a bit of a chameleon, always has been." Casey shrugged again. "Besides that, I couldn't always tell who the players were, or even what game it was, and the program notes kept changing."

"This relationship stuff isn't easy." Jim put a hand on Casey's arm. "But we're still friends, aren't we, or whatever we are?"

"We're still whatever we are, which I think is friends." Casey smiled. "You woke me up out of a warm bed and got me to work on time, and you even paid for the coffee. If that's not friendship, what is?"

Jim's hand still felt warm on Casey's arm. Casey leaned toward Jim and tentatively pulled him closer, and the two of them slid together on the dusty rock until they sat thigh to thigh. When Casey leaned his head against Jim's shoulder, the kiss was sweet and long.

"Friends." Jim's voice was quiet.

"Yes."

Another kiss, this one not just sweet but growing in intensity.

"What time is your plane?"

"Red-eye. Nine."

"An hour or two to get down and take you to the hotel, another hour for dinner, a bit of transportation ..."

"We've got time, if you've got the inclination."

Jim didn't answer in words, but it was enough to reassure Casey that he understood the situation properly. When he broke off the kiss, he leaned back and scanned the sky directly overhead.

"What?"

"No turkeys anywhere in sight."

"Good thing."

***

The Cascade Museum of Anthropology and Art wasn't busy on Sunday morning, which left plenty of space for appreciating the rooms full of beautiful wood, stone and ivory carvings and few people to overhear anything anyone said.

"How's he going to know what you feel if you don't tell him?"

"Blair, come on." Dan stopped in front of a large carved raven. "Casey's so oblivious. He didn't even realize Jim was a cop until I told him. If something's obvious to everyone else in the world, he won't even see it. What makes you think he'll even notice?"

Blair stared at the raven carving: Trickster stealing the sun. "You still want to work with him, right?"

"We're a team. You know, he gave up _Late Night_ for me? Didn't take a chance at his own show because it would break up our anchor team."

"Casey would have been working with Conan O'Brien? That's really good."

"Not quite." Dan's mouth twisted a little. "Casey would have *been* Conan O'Brien. It would have been _Late Night with Casey McCall_ if he'd taken the job."

"Wow. I mean, I know you guys are good, but ... wow."

"Yeah." Dan started walking again, his hands moving as if he could package the whole conundrum if he found the right movements. "He gave that up to work with me, and he didn't even let me know for years."

"Well, he wouldn't, would he? Casey doesn't seem to be the most emotionally attuned person I've ever seen." Blair's laugh sounded harsh, like a raven's squawk. "If that, right there, were the single criterion for finding the right person, I'd say he's found the perfect match -- Jim."

"You know, there are times when I want to take a two-by-four ..."

"Get in line, man."

"So why do you still work with this guy, and live with him, if he's like this?"

"That's the three-million-dollar, Nobel prize question." Blair shook his head sharply and stared at a Tlinglit blanket decorated with abalone shell disks that had been woven for a ceremony of the Bear clan. That was the trouble with the Northwestern style -- everything had eye shapes, even the abstracted paws and belly had eyes, and they all seemed to be watching him, mocking him. "Did you notice anything a little off about Jim?"

"Oh, you mean the supersonic hearing and so on? Yeah, I noticed it, but I figured he was wearing some kind of special audio device that you cops have that the rest of us don't know about."

"No device. That's Jim." Blair sighed. "The whole story takes way too long, so I'll boil it down: he has very well-developed senses, and I help him manage them. I started doing it when I was working on my doctorate -- that's what it was on -- and kept going afterward."

Dan turned to stare at him. "You're the guys who got burned by Sid the Slimeball? Oh, man. I am so sorry."

"Yeah." Blair shrugged. "Water over the damnation. You actually know Sid?"

"Well, everyone in New York sort of knows everyone else, by sight at least. He showed up a while back at Anthony's, where we all go after work, and Natalie noticed him. She'd been saying things under her breath about journalistic integrity and editorial ethics, but I thought she was annoyed about something that had happened at the station, so I didn't say anything. She gets these moods, and the only one who can really talk her out is Jeremy, but this was before he was hired. Anyway, she steamed for a long time but she didn't do anything until she saw him putting moves on Kim, the editorial assistant. Now, Kim can handle herself, but Sid had had a few and was over the edge --"

"He's that way sober, too."

"No surprise. So Natalie picked up her drink and got between Kim and Sid at the bar, and told him to take his hands off her friend. Kim started to interrupt but Natalie put her hand up," Dan imitated the gesture, "and told Sid to get out of Anthony's because he was bothering her. When the guy tried to protest, she told him that Anthony's was a bar for people with ethics and integrity and slimes like Sid didn't deserve to be there, and she threw her drink in his face and followed it with Kim's drink. Sid started to make a scene, and Tony, behind the bar, told him quietly to move along. And, after Sid was gone, he gave Kim and Natalie another round on the house."

"Wish I'd seen that," Blair said wistfully. "You know, I thought I'd put all the bad feelings about that behind me, but sometimes I still want to -- just -- well, you know. But I've tried to process all of that, get past it."

"You sound like you had a close encounter with a New Age guru there, my friend."

"You could say that." Blair grinned suddenly. "My mom's a New Age teacher, lecturer, guru, whatever. That's how she knew Sid; he published her last book, _Finding Yourself When You Have Nowhere Left To Go_.

Dan's eyes slanted toward Blair under dark brows. "You're making that up."

"I'll get you an autographed copy. She left me a few at the loft."

"Does it have a chapter on dealing with oblivious co-anchors?"

"Probably not, but you'd be surprised what she comes up with sometimes. She's got good ideas, and usually good sense -- and the lousiest damned timing in the world."

"I hear you." Dan stretched his arms over his head. "Who knows? Maybe she'll have something that will get me over the rock in my path that is Casey McCall."

"If he's a rock, what are you?"

"No idea. Let's get something to eat."

***

Jeremy was the first one at the airport, that night, but it wasn't surprising; he was the only one who didn't have someone else to hang around with. Alison and the new cameraman, whose name he still hadn't learned, arrived about ten minutes after Jeremy was settled into a corner seat in the waiting area for Gate Three. Jeremy was ten pages into the novel he'd bought at the gift shop, when a version of Sally arrived that he'd never seen before.

He was accustomed to thinking of Sally as tall, well-groomed, professional, competitive and thorough. This Sally wandered into the waiting room in flat-heeled shoes. She didn't seem to care that her hair was mussed, or that her makeup wasn't perfect, or even that her carry-on bag had a bit of something silky and cerise sticking out through the zipper. In fact, her relaxed attitude and way of walking reminded him of Dana, when she'd drunk something tall and blue and wanted to dance to 'Boogie Shoes' all night.

Sally flopped down into the seat next to him. "Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy."

"That's my name."

She smiled, calmly and comfortably. Jeremy thought he'd never seen her so relaxed.

"I think this has been a wonderful trip, don't you? We've sent back good film, and done good work, and I'm proud of all of us." She slid down until her neck rested on the back of the seat, crossed her ankles about three miles into the aisle, and smiled sleepily. "In fact," she interrupted her monologue with a poorly stifled yawn, "I might just catch some shut-eye on the way back, if you don't mind. Do you want the window seat or the aisle?" And she waved a sheaf of boarding passes at him.

It took no time at all for Jeremy to realize that he had the opportunity to act as an avatar of deity again -- and he took it. "Thanks. You know, you do look a bit sleepy. I could sort these out for you, if you don't mind."

"Feel free," Sally said lazily, "as long as you give me a window seat so I can sleep and not have anyone climbing over me."

"No problem." Jeremy felt magnanimous; this avatar business was heady stuff. "I'll sit next to you and I'll even tell the hostess not to bother you unless you ask."

"You're a prince, Jeremy. A real prince. Wake me when we're boarding, okay?" And she slid further down into the seat, closed her eyes and, to all intents and purposes, drifted off.

Jeremy fanned the five boarding passes in his hand like playing cards. "Okay, Alison, and ... I'm sorry, what was your name again?"

"Ferdinand," the cameraman said. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and blond, and looked nothing like the Disney cartoon, but Alison didn't seem to mind. "Call me Freddy."

"Okay, Freddy. Window or aisle?"

"Aisle. We can sit together, if that's not a problem."

"No problem at all." Jeremy handed Freddy a boarding pass and gave Alison the next one in sequence. "We've got three pairs of seats, and from what I heard when I arrived, the plane isn't full, so feel free to spread out if you need space."

"Thanks, Jeremy," Alison said happily.

Jeremy checked the number on the pass that Sally had kept in her hand, made sure his own was for the adjoining seat, and nodded to himself.

***

"See, you're not late." Blair threw on the parking brake and turned in his seat. "Do you want me to see you off?"

Dan's smile twisted a little. "Probably not a good idea. I think I can take it from here."

"Okay." Blair's right hand, which had been resting on the brake, moved to catch Dan's left hand in a warm grip. "You know, whatever happens, you've got a friend here, right?"

"Why does that sound so much like an old song?"

"Because it's true. All old songs that sound familiar are really proverbs in disguise, and proverbs are proverbially true." Blair paused. "I'm going to go back and deal with my life, and if it doesn't work out, you may get a phone call."

"Hey, you need a place to stay, you've got one, and I'll introduce you all around New York."

"You have connections?"

"Well, no, but my connections have connections."

Blair laughed. "I can see that. What time are you landing?"

"We're due in by 7 a.m., so that would give me, oh, three or four hours sleep if I can't sleep on the plane." Dan's eyes were steady on Blair. "You've got the station number, right?"

"And the apartment. But if I don't call, don't worry." Blair checked the clock on the airport wall. "You'd better get going."

"I've got a few things to deal with, too. Thanks, Blair, I mean really, thanks." Dan glanced to the side, and shrugged. "Oh, the hell with it. Nobody knows me here anyway."

"And everyone knows me, so what?"

They met in the exact middle space between the seats for the kiss, a slow, informal buss that made both of them smile when it ended. "Good flight, Dan," Blair said, as Dan stepped out of the car, suitcase in hand. He raised a hand, and darted off into the crowd.

Blair watched until he was inside the terminal, still moving quickly behind the plate glass. When he took off the brake and pulled out into traffic, his lips set in a firm line, and he aimed the car back toward Prospect Street.

***

Jeremy glanced at his watch. Casey was late, again. This was getting to be a habit. If he started to do it at the station, something would have to be done. Maybe Natalie could find some variation on the techniques she'd used to startle Dan out of his writer's block, though he wasn't sure how she could throw water on Casey or blast an air horn behind him if he wasn't there.

Dan had arrived a few minutes earlier, had taken the boarding pass from Jeremy without comment, and was now deeply engrossed in a biography of Mike Ditka, so much so that he occasionally snickered at the author's extravagant claims without noticing he was doing it.

"Attention, please. All passengers departing on flight 2265 for New York will begin boarding at this time through Gate Three. All passengers -- "

Jeremy stood and picked up his bag, and Casey, dashing through the crowd like a quarterback dodging linemen, nearly knocked him over as he skidded to a stop. "Whoops. Sorry, Jeremy. Thought I was going to be late."

"You nearly were." Jeremy looked Casey over. The man was definitely not at his best on this coast; it was a good thing he'd never taken that L.A. job years back. Maybe it was the magnetic fields, or the ever-present threat of the San Andreas Fault, or some other local phenomenon, but the carefully-wrapped Casey McCall who anchored _Sports Night_ only looked like a cousin to the one who was staring every which way, seeking something.

"Where's Sally? The desk said she'd picked up the boarding passes for us." Casey started off again and tripped over Sally's legs to sprawl full length on the floor. Sally, jarred out of her lassitude, shot him a sleepy glance and flicked an eye up at Jeremy.

"We leaving?"

"Yes, Sally, time to board."

"Thanks." She glided languidly to her feet, much the way Jeremy imagined Venus might have slid out of her seashell, picked up her bag, stepped over Casey and got into line.

Casey, flat out on the floor, goggled at her. "God, she's tall."

"I've been telling you that for years." Dan closed his book and put it on the seat next to him.

Jeremy reached a hand down to help Casey up. "Patience, grasshopper. I have your boarding pass right here." He handed Casey the pass. Casey smiled at him, almost uncertainly, and, ignoring Dan, Sally and everything else, got into line without looking at the piece of paper in his hand.

Chalk up two for the avatar of deity. One to go.

"Here, let me help you with that," Jeremy said to Dan, whose suitcase wheel seemed to have acquired an intimate acquaintance with the sleeve of his jacket. Almost accidentally, he picked up Dan's paperback and slid it into his own carry-on, as he shepherded the CSC contingent into line.

He'd give it back later, after they'd had a chance to talk. There was no way in heaven or on earth that anyone could put Casey and Dan next to each other for that many hours and have both of them stay quiet.

Jeremy only hoped that there'd be an airplane, and a partnership, left when they were done.

As he watched them go through the line and onto the plane, Jeremy started to feel uneasy. What were avatars of deity supposed to do when they didn't feel sure of themselves? Natalie, while no longer as actively Catholic as in the past, still had favorite saints whom she hectored on others' behalf. Jeremy wasn't sure he could do that; as a Jew, he could, perhaps, invoke the memory of the Ba'al Shem Tov, or other renowned Jewish scholars, but that was hardly the same. He needed a more earthly presence, someone he felt closer to than a man in a fur hat who'd lived centuries earlier, however holy and intelligent he'd been. But the only image that flashed into his mind was Natalie's face. Hmm. Maybe that would work. He sat down in his aisle seat, next to a sleepy Sally, and smiled, thinking of ways he could invoke Natalie's powers for good. That might work.

For about two seconds, until all hell broke loose two rows back.

"I'm not sitting next to him." Casey, at half roar.

"Casey, shut up and sit down." That was Dan.

"Jeremy -- "

"Casey, there aren't any more boarding passes. Sally asked me to sit with her, Alison and Ferdinand --"

"Freddy," said Freddy.

"Freddy, sorry -- wanted to sit together, and you weren't here in time to ask for special treatment."

"I don't want special treatment." Casey's face was getting red, but his voice had, thankfully dropped. "I just want to have an enjoyable flight. Is that too much to ask of business class?"

As one, Alison, Freddy, Jeremy and Dan said, "Casey, shut up and sit down."

"Yeah, what they said," Sally murmured without opening her eyes.

Suddenly, Casey appeared to realize that everyone in business class was looking at him. He dropped into the aisle seat next to Dan, picked up the airline's in-flight magazine and hid his face in it. Dan sighed. Alison and Freddy went back to whatever they'd been talking about and Sally smiled and drifted off to sleep.

It was amazing. Just by invoking Natalie's special powers, he'd managed to get Casey to sit down and be quiet. Jeremy resolved to be much more respectful when her special powers were in evidence in the future, especially if he wasn't wearing any clothes at the time.

***

When Jim walked into the loft, it was dark. If he hadn't heard the soft movement of breath into lungs, he would have thought he was alone.

"Jim," Blair said, from the couch.

It was time, long past time, for him to apologize. "Blair. We have to talk. I'm --"

"No." Blair stood, so quickly Jim thought he could almost see sparks. "We don't have to talk. I don't want to talk. I don't want to do a goddamn thing."

Jim held his breath. He let his vision acclimate to the darkness of the room until he could see Blair's face.

No. Blair couldn't be that angry.

"I'm tired of this game you've been playing, Jim, where you won't talk to me. I'm tired of finding out what's going on after everyone else. And I'm tired of doing all the work of being your partner and getting none of the benefits." Blair strode over to where Jim stood by the door and stopped in front of him, arms crossed. "This game ends, here and now, or our partnership ends. It's your choice."

Shit.

Blair was furious. His voice echoed coldly off the hardwood floor and reverberated against the kitchen cabinets just at the limit of Jim's hearing.

"Wh-what do you want?" Jim felt almost as helpless as he had when Incacha died and he'd been unable to prevent modern society from interfering with his friend's body. Blair had been implacable that day, pushing him up to the roof to regain his Sentinel powers. But he wasn't getting physical this time; he was standing two feet away behind a wall of anger, frustration and scarcely contained energy that was all but visible. If he tried to touch Blair, he knew he'd feel the burn, the way he'd been burned by dry ice when he was a kid.

Blair surveyed him as if he were someone who might, yet, be identified as the enemy. "I'm going out for a walk for ten minutes. When I get back, you can either be up there with your clothes off waiting for me -- "

"Or?"

"Or I pick up my suitcase and go to a hotel and find somewhere else to live tomorrow. That's the choice, Jim. If you say no this time, it's forever." And, with that, he plucked his leather jacket off the hook by the door, stepped past Jim and walked away without looking back.

The silence he left behind seemed to expand, until all the world was silent with only a ticking clock disturbing the absolute peace.

***

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for my book on Mike Ditka." Dan rustled through his carry-on bag. "I know I had it when I was waiting. Maybe I left it at the airport."

"You're reading a book on Ditka? You can't stand the guy."

"So?"

"Never mind." Casey stared out the window at the clouds that were sidelit by what might have been a crimson sunset behind the tail of the plane. "How was it?"

"Okay. Ahh." Dan pulled out a hardcover. "This'll do."

Casey's eyebrows rose. "_Finding Yourself When You Have Nowhere Left to Go_. That's a title?"

"Yes, it is, Casey, and it's written by an eminent New Age teacher, so back off."

"Okay, okay." Casey raised a hand as if warding off the Evil Eye. "Hmm. An eminent New Age teacher named Sandburg? I thought he was a cop."

"He is. His mother's an eminent New Age teacher."

"Oh." Casey sniffed, audibly.

Dan slid a sideward glance at him. "She makes more than you do."

"Right. Like I care."

"Oh, you care."

"Do not."

"Do, too."

"Do not."

"Casey, you care about a lot of things you don't admit, and this is one of them."

Relative quiet reigned in row seven for about ten minutes.

***

Fish or cut bait. Push comes to shove.

And Jim had less than ten minutes to decide the course of the rest of his life.

Put that way, the answer was simple.

Frightening, in its own way, but simple nonetheless.

***

"So, Casey." Dan closed his book, one finger inside it to mark his place, and turned his head to look at Casey, who appeared to be reading the same piece of advertising-disguised-as-news for the third time. "How long have you been sleeping around without telling me? It's obviously been quite a bit longer than I thought. You didn't just accidentally fall in bed out there."

Casey sighed. "I am not having this conversation."

Dan's voice hadn't been loud to start with, but he lowered it so only Casey could hear him. "Yes, you are. It's time."

"Not this again."

"Have it your way, then, but I've got to tell you, from here it looks like that's the way it's been for a long time now. You, having it your way."

Casey sighed again and closed the magazine. He waved down a passing flight attendant, who brought him a newspaper. When she'd gone on to the main cabin, he said, "Not really."

"So, you're telling me that your little fling with Sally a while back was your first extramarital affair?"

"I wasn't married when I was with Sally."

"All right, postmarital. Nonmarital. The question stands."

"Why do you care?"

Dan considered the question. "Because I work with you and I need to know if I can trust you, or, rather, how far I can trust you."

"Oh, low blow!"

"Is it?" Dan surveyed Casey intently. "Apparently, a lot has been going on that I've missed, unless you're going to tell me that your encounter with Jim was the first you've ever had."

"And your affair with his partner?"

"Answer the question, dude."

Casey signed for a third time, annoyed. With at least five hours to go, he knew he'd have to deal with Dan sooner or later, and sooner might let him get some sleep. "No, it wasn't the first." He pitched his voice low, hoping that the noise from the engines would mask it from the other rows.

"Okay." Dan stared out the window at the rapidly darkening sky over the Rocky Mountains, and the tiny flickers of lights along the highways below. "How long?"

"A long time." Honesty forced Casey to say what he'd been holding back. "Ever since the interview with Shane McArnold. The first one, not the recent one."

"The one in Texas?"

"Yeah."

"Man." Dan shook his head. "What were you thinking? That guy hasn't got two brain cells to rub together."

"No, but he had a terrific ass in those days. He's gone to seed a bit since he hit the majors."

Dan absorbed this quietly. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"What was I supposed to say?" Casey's voice was intense, as near to Dan's ear as he could manage. "I was doing the subjects of my stories, so I'd get more stories? Because that wasn't what was happening. It wasn't about the work. I was just, well, having fun." He paused. "I needed to be having fun somewhere in my life, and it wasn't happening at home."

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation," Dan quoted.

"I tried that. It didn't work, so I decided to not be as desperate any more and stay quiet about it," Casey said. "That worked."

Dan nodded. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Why didn't *you* tell me?"

"What, that I liked guys? Are you really telling me you never noticed?"

"I noticed. At least, I thought I did. But you never said anything, and I figured that we had to work together, so I didn't want to mess up the one relationship in my life that worked."

"Ah."

"What does 'ah' mean in Rydellspeak?"

"If I have to explain 'ah', Casey, you're in a lot more trouble than you think."

"I'm usually in more trouble than I think, or at least that's what Natalie tells me, but I get out of it too. Don't you forget that."

"This is true." Dan stretched his legs as far as he could under Alison's seat. "At times I've even admired your ability to remain undismayed by the amount of trouble you were in -- but not this time." Casey swiveled his head to stare at Dan. "You left the high road a long way behind, my friend, and I, for one, have no idea how you're going to get back to it."

Dan flicked the reading light on, settled back in his seat and opened his book. Casey, his mouth settling into a line, closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep. It didn't work.

"Dan?"

"Hmm?"

"If I tell you that none of it was about the work -- that I've always done the job the way it was supposed to be done -- will you believe me?"

Dan closed the book around his finger again and pushed his seat back. "Is that what you're telling me?"

"Yes. That's what I'm telling you."

"Then I guess I'll have to believe you, because Casey McCall takes the high road and will not tell a lie."

"Lies are verbal, Danny. I've never lied to you."

"Oh, you are so full of it, Case. You should be in that store window on Sixth Avenue with all the other fine rugs."

"I have never, ever, in all the time I've known you, told you something in words that was not true."

"You've ducked and dodged and evaded with words, but that's not the point." Dan shook his head. "The point is that when you're telling the truth your body moves differently than when you're lying, and it doesn't matter what you're saying. You did it when you were sleeping with Sally. You did it whenever I saw you after you came back from one of those locker rooms, when you'd wander into Anthony's just before closing, and everyone knew it."

"Everyone knew what? That I'd been out somewhere having sex? I don't believe that. Everyone at CSC is not gifted with second sight or any other kind of special power of observation. In fact, most of the people we work with are pretty short-sighted about what's going on around them."

"So says the man who waited three months to ask Dana out when she'd been expecting the question for more than two. They knew, Casey, we all knew except for Isaac, and as far as I know, he still doesn't. Nobody talked about it, not even Natalie. The rumor was that you had a girlfriend on the side, and we all knew what Lisa was like. Nobody blamed you, man."

Casey looked as if some major-league batter had hit him upside the head with a Louisville Slugger. "How did they know?" Even his voice was stunned.

"They knew because you walked in as if you'd done something you knew you weren't proud of, and you didn't want to talk about it." Dan paused to take a glass of ginger ale from the flight attendant. "And if you want to know how we could tell, all I can say is that it was a very familiar sight. Familiar in a family way, you might say. You looked a whole lot like your son did, the time he inflated his Little League stats to impress you."

"Oh."

"But, as I said, nobody blamed you."

"Including you?"

For the first time in the conversation, Dan refused to meet his eyes.

"You could have told me. I thought we were friends. That hurt, Casey."

"I'm sorry."

Dan took a gulp of ginger ale. "It's past."

"Are we past?"

"I don't know. Are you going to lie to me some more? No, wait, you've never lied to me on the job."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"How long have you been seeing men?"

"Casey, Casey, Casey." Dan shook his head. "You could have asked that question any time the last ten years and the answer would be the same.

"And the answer is?"

"Always. I've dated men, I've dated women. I've fallen in love and out of love. I've just never lived with anyone, and I kept my work life separate from my dating until I met Rebecca." Dan accepted a packet of mixed nuts from the flight attendant; Casey took a decaf coffee and a packet of mints. "You've never met anyone else I've gone out with, as far as I know."

"You know people who aren't in broadcasting or sports?"

"What do you think a New York renaissance is all about? I've dated actors and dancers from Broadway chorus lines and artists in SoHo and grad students from NYU. There are a lot of people out there who have other kinds of lives, Casey, and I like meeting them. I like dating them. I like having sex with them. I make them breakfast in the morning, and send them chocolates on their birthdays."

"Ah. Then when you told me I should have fried an egg for Sally, you were speaking from experience."

"Not experience with Sally, but yes."

"And nobody at CSC noticed all this ... activity."

"For one thing, it's none of CSC's business who I sleep with. For another, I am Dan, who does good things where women -- and men -- are concerned."

"All right, since we're having this honesty session, there's something I have to ask you."

"Go ahead. *My* life is an open book that you may read at your leisure."

"Why Blair? Because he was convenient?"

Dan thought he'd been doing fairly well at staying calm throughout the conversation, but he felt the anger flare up again. Patience, he told himself, this is someone who's hurt and striking out and really doesn't understand a lot of things. He deserves honesty but not hostility.

"No, although I can understand how you'd see it that way. I mean, I really wasn't going to stay in the other bedroom in that suite that night. I would've slept on the street to not be there." He drew a breath and glanced out the window at the cobalt sky. "I went to stay with Blair because I didn't have anywhere else to go, but I slept with him because he was honest with me. He didn't try to lie to me with his body or anything else, and I could trust him. Any other questions?"

Casey said nothing. Dan opened the packet of nuts and started to chew on them as he went back to reading.

They were brought meals by the flight attendant, grilled ham with pineapple for Casey and chicken with mushrooms for Dan. The lights dimmed and the movie started on the little pop- down screen ahead of them.

Dan continued to read. About an hour into the movie, he felt a light touch on his arm and looked up.

"I'm really sorry about Rebecca," Casey said quietly.

"Thanks." Dan nodded, his throat tight. "So am I."

***

When Blair opened the door to the loft, the first thing he saw was one of his tall, solid meditation candles on the table. The light of the flame reflected up off the metallic table top and made it glow. He almost missed the small metal key that lay next to the candle.

This wasn't like Jim at all. Out of reflex, he made sure his pistol was at hand, and turned quickly in his tracks, checking for damage.

No damage. Nothing looked unusual, except the lighting and something over toward the stairs to Jim's bedroom.

As he picked up the key, he stepped back and stumbled over something that turned out to be a long-sleeved sweater, draped half over a chair and half on the floor. The sweater led to a shirt, which led to an undershirt at the bottom of the stairs. He could see the undershirt from the light of another candle, part way up the stairs. They were thirty-hour candles, and fairly new at that; he'd burned them for about an hour or so in the last week while Naomi was visiting. The flames licked high in the still air, more than an inch above the tip of the wick.

Further up the stairs lay a pair of trousers, one and then the other shoe, and socks.

Blair followed the trail step by step, slowly. He paused when his head was at the floor level to check it out. From what he could see, nobody was standing on the floor upstairs; that didn't mean there wasn't someone up there on the bed or behind the dresser. Three more candles were lit in a hasty grouping on the bedside table, with a pair of boxer shorts on the floor next to the table.

Something clinked, metal on metal.

Blair pulled his pistol and held it at the ready. It wasn't likely that any of Cascade's felons had chosen to indulge in enacting a revenge fantasy that night, but since that kind of thing never happened when you expected, it was best to be prepared.

Wait a minute. There was the Cardozo bust last week, where the guy Jim had pulled in had sworn to get even. Right. It would be just his luck if Cardozo had decided to show up and play some of his nastier tricks at the one time when Blair would have killed to have some privacy to sort things out with Jim. In fact, if Cardozo was actually up there, he could expect to get shot; to hell with the paperwork. A nice, nasty leg wound would keep the bastard out of their hair for a while.

Blair stepped up the remaining stairs, thankful that he'd worn sneakers and even more thankful that the weather was dry so the soft soles wouldn't squeak and give away his position. It had to be obvious that he was there -- he hadn't been particularly quiet in opening the door -- but he didn't have to give away his position before it was necessary.

Jim lay naked on the bed, on top of the sheets, one arm out toward him and one behind his head. The candlelight made his skin glow. The flames flickered, reflected, in his eyes.

Blair spun, brought his pistol down toward the back of the dresser and scanned the room. "Where is he?"

"Where's who?" Honest confusion came from the bed, as Jim pushed himself up on one elbow.

"Cardozo." Blair was still scanning the room, pistol at the ready.

"Cardozo? In the jail infirmary with a cracked jaw. Simon said he ran into some guy from another gang while in a holding cell." Jim slid down onto the bed again. "You can put the gun away, Chief, the furniture's unarmed." He shook his head. "Damn. What a way to break the mood."

"I was concerned about you, you idiot." Blair holstered the weapon. For the first time, he took a good look at the way Jim was lying on the bed, with his right arm up over his head. Jim shifted his shoulders on the pillow and Blair heard the metallic clink again. "What is that sound?"

"Oh, that." Jim moved his right arm up a little; his wrist was handcuffed to the loft railing. "I didn't want you to think I would be anywhere but here." His left hand slid down his ribs and belly to stroke himself gently. "Here, and ready for you. How do you want me?" he whispered.

Blair felt himself relax for the first time in what felt like days. "Let me count the ways."

Jim came up on one elbow again as Blair leaned down to kiss him, and the pillow behind him moved against the railing. Suddenly Blair heard the unmistakable sound of something small, falling from the bed to hit the railing and bounce down to the main floor.

Blair stopped, a few inches from Jim, whose eyes had gone wide, his mouth rueful.

"Oh, shit."

"And you want to kiss me with that mouth." Blair slid his hand behind Jim's shoulders to hold him in place as he kissed him. "Let me guess: that was your backup handcuff key, right?"

Jim nodded and leaned in for another deep kiss. "I hope you brought the other key with you." His voice sounded deeper, rough with desire.

Blair showed him the key, but set it down on the far side of the candles, just out of Jim's reach. "Don't worry. You won't be needing it for a while." He pushed Jim down on the mattress and held him there with a hand in the middle of his chest, over his heart. "So."

Jim waited, watching him. Blair knew that Jim could feel his pulse through that hand, but he also knew how closely he could monitor Jim. He didn't need to touch him to do it, only to look at him, but this way it worked in both directions.

"Why." It wasn't quite a question, but Blair wanted an answer anyway.

Jim swallowed hard. "I was afraid." When Blair said nothing, he paused a moment before continuing. "You already have so much of me. I wanted to keep that last bit of myself separate."

"You still could, you know."

"No. I can't. You know that." A faint smile hid in the corners of Jim's lips. "I'm not that kind of guy."

"What kind of guy are you?" This was closer to a question.

"You should know. You've studied me for years."

"I don't know everything. Tell me something I don't know." Blair's lips hovered inches from Jim's, but kept his hand on Jim's chest. He felt Jim's heart beat harder, a little faster.

"I like to have fun, but when it's love it's for good and serious, even if it doesn't work." Jim swallowed hard. "I still care about Carolyn, even though she's remarried."

"I asked for something I don't know," Blair whispered, the soft words stroking Jim's face. "Tell me."

A shadow seemed to move across Jim's eyes. "The first man I fell in love with was a Ranger. We were together for three years. Not public. Not living together, except as part of the same squad."

Blair waited.

"He died in Peru, in the crash." Jim took a breath. "The second man I fell in love with was a bartender who used to run a club over on Fourteenth Street. We met at the health club down by City Hall." Jim's eyes flickered, as if a blue flame had passed through them. "A couple of toked-up bikers came in one night and pulled knives on each other, and he tried to get between them. I broke a chair over one guy's head and kicked the other into the wall, but it wasn't fast enough. When I got back to Pete, he was bleeding out and I couldn't stop it. I couldn't keep him alive."

Blair watched Jim's chest move hard under his hand, the way it did after a run. He wanted to kiss Jim, to stop the words, but he'd asked for those words. All he could do was try to make it easier for Jim to say them, and take whatever came. He slid his other hand across Jim's shoulder to rest against the side of his face, feeling the hard bones under the warm skin.

"The third man I fell in love with went through hell and back, for me. He died when I pushed him away and came back to life when I called him, and he holds all my secrets in his hands." Jim's eyes locked on Blair's face with a click that could almost be heard and felt. "And whether I live or die now is up to him."

Blair felt the spring-loaded tension within himself loosen, as if the springs had been transmuted from metal to water. His shoulders relaxed, and the long muscles on his back let go in the places where they'd grabbed on too hard, when he'd walked out before. He leaned in that last inch and kissed Jim, lips sliding gently over lips, inquisitive tongue investigating secrets. When he lifted his head he saw that Jim was still waiting for him to say ... something.

"Live." He let the next kiss turn sharper, hotter, and mellow into sweetness. "For good, and forever."

Jim's free hand rose to tangle in Blair's hair for a moment, then slid down his chest to start to play with buttons. "Tell me something I don't know." He undid the first two quickly but played with the third and fourth, in and out, in and out. "Please."

"I fell in love under a garbage truck. And in a helicopter. And jumping out of an airplane. And watching TV before the walls blew up. And in a mine."

"What about on surveillance?"

"That's courtship."

Jim's arm came up around Blair again, but Blair pushed it down to match the one in the handcuff. He gripped them both and knelt over Jim on the bed, his knees pushing Jim's legs apart. "And?"

Blair let his voice slide deep and rough, with a Southern accent. "I don't want you courtin' no sportscaster, y'hear, or I'm a-gettin' out the shotgun and askin' your intentions."

Jim looked as if he wanted to smile -- the crinkles at the corners of his eyes trembled -- but didn't dare.

"No more, Jim. No more." Blair slid forward, pinning Jim down with his weight. "I know it wasn't just Casey. You think I didn't know about the others, about Phil Martinez and Erik Garda and all your other casual lays and flirts? You were careful, I know; you never let it go too far with any of them, just good clean fun. All those times I heard you come in late, and watched you shift around on your chair in the bullpen the next day? I'm a cop, Jim. I put the clues together."

"I never meant to hurt you." The hint of a smile had vanished from his eyes. "I was too afraid."

After so long observing Jim's fight-or-flight responses to fear, Blair had gotten to the point where he could see Jim's jaw muscles start to work and know whether Jim would confront or avoid whatever had set him off -- though he still couldn't always tell what would set him off.

Jim didn't learn only from books. He needed to have his lessons written on his body, in his muscles.

Blair let his eyes burn into Jim's for a long minute, then dropped his head. His lips met Jim's in a kiss that interrogated Jim's mouth as ruthlessly as Jim could interrogate a murder suspect. When he pulled back, both of them were breathing harder but Blair's grip on Jim's wrists hadn't budged a centimeter.

"I'm going to make you forget anyone else ever existed," Blair growled. His next kiss was harder, stronger, but his lips and hands were the only things touching Jim's naked body, and he felt Jim's back arch in protest as he tried to make some -- any -- contact with Blair. He broke the kiss off roughly. "No. Who's in charge here?"

Jim's eyes had grown dark, the pupils expanding. "You are."

"Remember that." Blair pushed Jim's wrists up until they brushed the railing, and Jim took the hint and grabbed on with both hands. "Don't let go." He didn't wait for acknowledgment, but moved back on the bed, still without touching Jim, until he was poised over Jim's long, dripping cock, curved so high that it nearly brushed Jim's navel. He put his hands down on either side of Jim with plenty of space to spare -- no touching there, either -- dropped his head and started to lick slowly, gathering nectar, little fluttery touches and long, wet sweeps up the length of the shaft, toying with the head and back down again, never quite taking it into his mouth completely but never losing touch.

Jim quivered.

Blair teased back down the shaft and went lower, breathing the musk in the dark pubic hair, nosing at his balls in their wrinkled sac, sweeping his tongue across whatever he wanted.

He wanted it all, and he was going to take it.

Jim shivered, long rippling waves of sensation that could be tracked in the goose bumps flowing up and down his body, but he didn't move an inch until Blair slid his hands under Jim's ass and tilted it toward himself. Jim slid his feet up on the bed, bending his knees, and groaned ever so quietly.

"I didn't say you couldn't make noise," Blair commented quietly. "Just don't move." He went back to licking and nibbling on Jim's cock, tracing the heavy veins with the tip of his tongue, letting it flutter around the rounded edge of the head, listening to Jim's breathing stutter. Having made Jim open himself up, he let the opportunity to explore that darker territory go for a while, and concentrated on bringing him almost but not quite to the edge, backing off, and moving back toward the edge again.

When he climbed off the bed and stood next to it, Jim watched him but said nothing. Instead, he waited, hands clasped on the railing, eyes nearly black with wanting.

Blair quickly, efficiently, tore off his own clothes and dropped them on the floor. He climbed back onto the bed, straddling Jim's head, and let his own cock dangle just out of reach of Jim's open lips. "Don't make me come yet. I'm not done with you." Jim nodded. Blair leaned forward, letting his arms down on either side of Jim, brushing Jim's belly with his chest, feeling the sweep of his hair against Jim's smooth skin and its narrow trail of hair pointing south. As he took Jim into his mouth, he could feel Jim doing the same, licking as he licked, caressing as he caressed, until Blair dropped the wet, eager cock and nuzzled lower, his hands reaching under Jim to part his thighs further. He leaned in to taste, to explore, and knew he himself was being explored as well, and for the first time he shivered with the knowledge of how deep the desire coursed in his veins, in the feathers of his nerves, in his muscles and bones.

Jim was already loose, already slick and ready for him. He could taste it. He pulled back and felt himself tasted, felt himself explored and known by Jim's tongue and nearly exploded with the sensation. Too soon. He let himself fall to the side, swinging his leg over carefully to keep from kicking Jim, and saw a puzzled and worried expression on his lover's face.

Blair put his hand under Jim's knee and pulled it up.

The uncertainty vanished from Jim's face. He raises his parted legs, and Blair moved to kneel between them and slide his hands under Jim's hips, positioning him. Blair sheathed himself, slicked himself, and pointed his cock into Jim, slowly moving forward, inward. He shifted his focus from the point of connection to Jim's face, hoping, hoping -- and saw the same eagerness in those blue eyes that he felt inside himself. And then --

It was as if Jim had opened the door and invited him in, without a word. No pause, no adjustment, only a slow, sweet slide in to the root, until his belly stood firm behind Jim's balls. His hands slid down sleek thighs to rest on either side of Jim's hips, and he let himself lean forward to rest his head against that sculpted chest for a moment. Such a gift, that welcome.

But only a moment.

The first stroke glided past Jim's prostate; his mouth opened in a soundless oh and his hips wriggled, just a little, against the sheets. The second stroke turned on the sound effects.

Most of Blair's brain cells, the ones that still had any blood left for thinking, were jumping up and down in a stadium somewhere, cheering as Blair leaned closer over Jim to suck on a nipple while Blair's legs and back and ass pounded Jim into the mattress. The few remaining unattached cells were giving silent thanks for the kind of hard physical conditioning Blair had gone through in his time as a cop. Stamina. That was the word. The brain cells in the stands waved a banner that read, "Stamina!" while the reptile brain in his lower back shrugged, grinned, and kept on thrusting, steadily, alternating slow and fast but never stopping.

Jim's hands were still clenched around the railing, but that was as much to keep him from being pushed headlong off the bed and the loft as anything else. The rest of his body was shuddering, shivering, writhing on the bed, wrapping itself around Blair in every way it could manage.

Too fast. Blair tried to think of something to slow himself down, like fixing the timing on his car (the banners now read, "Pistons and Cylinders") or the evening weather report ("Hot! Wet! Steamy!") but nothing worked. So he gave himself over to the demands of his body, to the heat and feeling and smell of Jim all around him, to the need to push himself as far into that perfect body as he could go and never leave, and he told the reptile brain to do whatever it wanted.

Blair's knee slipped, and he shifted position. The next thrust must have hit Jim precisely in the right spot, for he let out a roar, all his muscles tensed, and came like a fountain. His grip on Blair clamped down, and Blair felt the brain cells massing at the base of his spine charge down off the stands and across the field, banners waving, riding that reptile for all it was worth, and he managed to pound into the wet hot core of his universe four more times before he came, losing every brain cell he'd ever possessed in the rush of sensation, slippery wet and delicious.

An eon later, Jim managed to lower his legs and they rolled onto their sides. Blair lay with one arm across Jim's chest, still feeling as if he were touching another part of himself even though they'd become disconnected and he'd discarded the condom a while earlier. Jim's arm came down around his shoulders.

"Blair?"

"Yeah?"

"I've got a question."

Blair opened one eye. "I'll get the key in a minute."

"That's not it."

"Oh?"

"What's a sportscaster?"

***

When the flight landed at LaGuardia, Dan and Casey shared a taxi with Jeremy on the way into town. Neither of the anchors spoke from their opposing ends of the back seat, and after a good look at each of them Jeremy kept his peace as well, only nodding instead of saying good night when he was let off first at his apartment.

"Where to?" the driver asked.

Dan glanced at Casey, who stared out the window without responding, and gave the driver the address for the CSC building. When they arrived, Dan got out, paid his share and took his suitcase from the trunk, not expecting Casey to do the same. As he walked from the curb and used his Castle key to get into the building, he heard Casey paying the driver and recovering his bag, followed by Casey's fast stride to catch up with him, catch the door and follow him into the lobby.

It hadn't been easy to sit next to someone who barely spoke to him for an entire red-eye flight. Dan felt exhausted, but he knew that if he didn't drop off his notes and check for messages before he went home, he'd have no brains to do it in the morning. He was planning a wrap-up commentary on the track-and-field events, and a short editorial on the Special Olympics; those should give him something to do if the pre-season exhibition games they were supposed to cover ran late or were canceled.

All it should take would be one sentence, one start on the lead to each story. Ten words, each. With that, he could come back refreshed on Monday and know what he wanted to say.

Ten words.

Dan dropped his notes on the desk, scrubbed his face with his hands, and brought up his word processing program on the computer. One sentence, that was all it would take. He didn't even need to turn the lights on; he could do it in the light from the screen.

One lousy sentence.

Dan closed his eyes, let his mind flicker back to the damp green day on the field and the amazing leaps and runs he'd seen, the tireless coaches, the -- no, he didn't need to think of Casey getting out of Jim Ellison's truck, or of Jim and Blair charging across the field to arrest the man who hit his girlfriend's coach. He didn't need to think of Casey with Jim.

He didn't need to think of Casey, under Jim, coming so hard they must have felt the aftershocks in the San Andreas Fault.

The hell with it. He'd do it in the morning, somehow.

He couldn't do it with Casey there, ever so carefully not looking at him.

Dan shut off his computer, picked up the handle to his suitcase and left. He couldn't tell if Casey, behind him in the dark, was watching him or not. He didn't want to think that he cared, either way. He rode the elevator alone to the ground floor, flagged a cab down outside, and went home.

When he came in, the next morning, he half expected to find Casey asleep on the office couch, disheveled and grouchy, but the office was empty.

Natalie cocked her head at him as he sat down a few minutes before the noon meeting. "Rough trip?"

"Long and tiring."

"I hear that." She glanced at the empty chair next to him. "I also hear Bobbie Bernstein is filling in for Casey tonight?"

"Oh?"

"He called in sick. That's what Isaac said."

"What's what Isaac said?" Isaac asked, as he sat down slowly at the head of the table.

"That Bobbie is filling in for Casey."

Isaac nodded. "Yes, Bobbie is filling in for Casey. Casey called in sick, so I gave him the day off, which I think is only fair since he worked all weekend. In fact," he said, viewing Dan speculatively, "I half expected you to take the day off also, though I must say I'm pleased that you didn't decide to do it today."

"Because I worked all weekend?" Dan asked.

"Because you worked all weekend." Isaac glanced around the room. "Let me see. Dana's in Brussels, but Natalie is here. Natalie, you're in charge. I'm going to go upstairs to see what Calvin thinks of the new staffing plan that Sally filed this morning."

"New staffing plan?" Dan was starting to feel as if he was still on the plane, or perhaps still on the other coast.

"Sally thinks it would be a fine idea to move West Coast Update out to the West Coast. Interesting, isn't it?" Isaac mused. "For one thing, we'd actually be able to use all that wonderful technology that Calvin's companies make, and cover the news without having to be on the same coast or even in the same building. What do you think about that, Danny?"

"I - I think it's a great idea." Visions of a tall, delighted Cascade police captain danced in Dan's head.

"I'm glad you do. We have to talk, you and I, after the meeting."

The rundown went fast. Natalie put the NFL preview in the tens, and the five-minute interview with Orvelle Wallace, the Cascade Jags star, in the thirties as a callback after the break. Dan suggested a roundup on baseball spring training techniques, and Jeremy supplied a slew of track-and-field training tips that had been adopted by American League coaches for their players. Kim made a slighting remark about the quality of jai-alai coverage in Florida and Will countered with an observation about women's tennis, and the meeting was over.

Dan waited until the room had cleared before making his way down the hall to Isaac's office. When he knocked and went in, Isaac was standing by the window, watching the street. Without turning, Isaac said, "You know, Dan, I've been in this business a long time. A lot of people who started with me aren't in it any more, for a lot of reasons. And some of them aren't that old, either."

Dan shut the door behind himself. "You're not talking about me, are you?"

"Did I say I was?"

"No, but you don't usually ask me to come down to your office and then talk about people leaving the business." Dan drew a breath, blinked and rubbed his face with one hand. "It's Casey, isn't it?"

"Why would you think that?"

"Isaac -- "

"Yes. Casey called me this morning and told me he had to take a day off to think about what he wanted to do with his life. Apparently, he experienced some kind of epiphany while he was on the other coast."

"Well, that's one way to describe it." Dan muttered.

Isaac's eyebrows rose. "I gather that's not your description."

"Um, no."

"I thought not." Isaac went slowly toward the liquor cabinet. "Bourbon?"

"I probably shouldn't."

"Neither should I."

"Two fingers, then."

"Okay."

Dan took the drink from the cabinet, and sat down by Isaac's desk. Isaac put his own glass down and then sat down, carefully, in the other chair. Dan watched him with tenderness, and a little concern. "You doing okay, Isaac?"

"I'm fine. Better than you are, in fact."

"Oh? How's that?"

"Well, I don't have a partner to worry about, except my wife, and I don't have to worry about her. I know she's going to be there when I get home, because we've been there for each other whenever things happen for the past forty years or so. Now you," Isaac gestured at Dan with the glass in his hand, "you don't know if you have a partner to worry about or not, and that's a worry in itself."

"I think I'm confused. Can we start over?"

"Look, Danny, I'll spell it out for you. There are two things going on here, and you're in the middle of both of them. One: Casey is thinking of getting out of sportscasting. Now, I don't pretend to know why he's thinking this, or whether this has anything to do with you, but I can tell you that it isn't going to give Calvin Trager the warm fuzzies when he hears about it -- and that's because of the second thing. Two: Calvin wants to give the two of you your own show in addition to _Sports Night_."

"Our own show?" Dan couldn't believe his ears.

"Yeah, something called _Saturday Afternoon with McCall and Rydell_. He wants the two of you to do a weekly roundup, commentary, depth interviews. He wants all the good stuff, all the best stuff you two do already for half an hour more every week, with a commensurate increase in your paychecks. Personally, I think it's a fine thing. I like it when my people are recognized for what they can do."

"Did you tell Casey this?"

"I didn't get the chance." Isaac scowled, but under the scowl Dan could see a trace of pain. "He's a mess, Danny. I thought he was in bad shape with Lisa, and then in that Dana melodrama we had last year, but this is the worst yet. Do you know what's going on with him?"

Dan sipped the bourbon, which tasted oddly sweet and sharp. He set the drink down on Isaac's desk. "We had a fight, out in Cascade. Doesn't matter what it was about. He was on his high horse on his high road, and I couldn't take it. So he left, and I couldn't find him for hours, even with the help of a local detective. Police, not private," he added, since Isaac looked perturbed at the thought of a private eye being involved. "Okay, I ran in front of the cop's car, by accident, and when he didn't hit me we started talking and he helped me look." Isaac leaned back in his seat, satisfied. "And when I did find him, he -- "

"Was all wrapped up in something else."

"Someone else."

"Ouch." Isaac took another sip of bourbon. "Male or female?"

Dan's jaw dropped. "You knew."

"Of course I knew. What kind of newsman do you think I am?"

"Sorry." Dan thought about this. "You've never said anything."

"People's personal lives are their own, as long as it doesn't interfere with my show. For that matter, young Daniel, I never told him about your little escapade with my nephew, Joseph -- who, by the way, sends you his best wishes from New Orleans, where he's been playing cornet with a jazz band and is supposed to be in Preservation Hall next New Year's Eve."

"Hey, good for him." Dan blinked. "I appreciate it, Isaac. I love you, man."

"Shut up. I'm trying to tell you something here."

Dan assumed an air of attention that he thought, privately, made him resemble an earnest English shorthair pointer without the spotted coat.

"Casey's in trouble, and this time I don't think he's going to find his own way out of this. I can't say I haven't expected him to do something like this in the past, but if he quits now he'll detonate his future well beyond his ability to repair it. So I want you to do something for me." Isaac glared at Dan, daring him to disagree. "I'm giving you the day off. I want you to get the hell out of my studio and go straighten out your partner while he still is your partner. I don't want to see either of you until tomorrow."

"What about the show? And Calvin?"

"Bobbie's a good fill-in. I'm going to give Jeremy his break. He can sit in with her on it; he's been begging to do this for a while. Natalie will do a good job producing him. I can't have her on camera, because Dana's not here, but she'll understand that when I tell her that she's your backup from now on -- provided that you're still here and working on this new show. You see, I figure you're going to need a backup at least one night of the week, and that will give us a chance to deepen our field." Isaac nodded, pleased with his thoughts. "I can stall Calvin for a day or so, but no longer. What are you doing, still sitting here? Get out there and find Casey and fix him, you hear me?"

"Every word, Isaac." Dan said fervently. He leaned over and gave Isaac a brief, strong hug before he left, at a near run.

Casey didn't answer his door, but his mail had been picked up. Dan put two and two together and walked around the corner to a small bookstore that had a café in the back. He waved to the man behind the bar, who handed him a coffee and a donut, and wandered into the back of the café.

The early lunch crowd had already left, and the late crowd hadn't arrived yet, so there were still seats available. Dan shrugged at the waiter, gestured toward a table at which he could see a narrow, familiar head with a shock of brown hair over the top of the Times sports section, and the waiter shrugged back and waved him on. He sat down, set the coffee and donut on the table, and said, "Any chance the Yankees will win the pennant this year?"

"Only in their dreams, unless they concentrate on fielding and get the pitcher some surgery for his bad shoulder." Casey rustled the paper down one inch and peered at him over the ragged top edge. "I thought you weren't talking to me."

"I thought I was tired."

"Oh."

"I also thought you'd be coming in to work today."

"I asked Isaac for a day off."

"I heard."

"So?"

"He gave me one."

"You're kidding."

"No joke."

Casey shook his head and went back to the sports section. "Who's doing the show?"

"Bobbie Bernstein and Jeremy."

The paper crashed down onto the table, nearly upsetting Dan's coffee.

"Jeremy? Why?"

"Isaac said we need to deepen our field."

"Deepen our field? Isaac said that?"

Dan nodded. The donut was pretty good, one of the best frycakes he'd had in a long time. It had been made fresh that morning, with a very slight touch of ... was it cinnamon? Something a little warm and spicy in the dough, to be sure. There was nothing like a New York donut on a morning where you didn't really want to eat anything more than pastry and coffee.

"Why on earth -- oh, the Europe deal. He's sending Bobbie, right? She's been there before. He can't send Jeremy unless he sends Natalie also."

"He's not sending either of them," Dan said, as calmly as possible considering that he was burning his tongue on the coffee. "He wants them here. He also wants to start using Natalie on camera, which I think is a fine idea."

"You think that?" Casey abandoned any hope of reading the sports section, and folded it instead. "Why?"

"Because Calvin wants to give you and me our own weekend sports commentary show, something like Siskel and Ebert do, but on sports, not movies."

"I thought someone else was working with Ebert now."

"You're missing the point, Casey. Calvin wants us to expand what we do. He wants us to be _Saturday Afternoon with McCall and Rydell_ in addition to _Sports Night_. Isaac thinks this is a fine idea." Dan put the coffee cup carefully back into its saucer. "What do you think?"

Casey shook his head once, as if shaking off water after a sudden shower. "I think it's an interesting idea."

Dan leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out in an effort to stay calm. "An interesting idea. That's all?"

"I've just heard this. I need to think about it a little."

"Uh-huh." Dan pressed his lips together and ran his tongue over a dry spot in his mouth. The dry spot always showed up when he was nervous or worried. "You were right, you know."

How did Casey manage to look so much like his nine-year-old son without even changing expression? "I was right? About what?"

"Rebecca. You were right. Steve Sisco and all. She's not going back to him, but she's having the baby, and he's going to be involved with her. Or so she hopes." Dan stared at the crumpled newspaper. From the headlines, it looked as if the World Wrestling Federation was having a bad year for injuries.

"You've broken up with her."

"Yes."

"Ah." Casey reached for his cup of coffee, realized the remaining mouthful was cold, and went to get a refill from the carafe at the bar. Dan finished his donut, washed it down with the rest of his coffee, and went for his own refill. When they sat down again, Casey rested his cup on the table and wrapped his hands around it, his long fingers interlacing loosely. "So, Isaac sent you out to ask me to come back because Calvin wants us to have our own weekend show."

"Our own weekend prime-time show." Dan swallowed hard, and the coffee stung on the way down. "But that's not what I'm doing."

"It's not?"

"It's not."

"Then what are you doing, Danny?"

"I'm not here to tell you what a great opportunity this is, or to remind you how Calvin saved _Sports Night_ and CSC. You don't need me to tell you that." Dan suddenly wished that Jeremy, as avatar of deity, could wave a magic wand and make it all right, but he knew that this time it wouldn't work. He couldn't even imagine what deity would be appropriate: Eros? Eris? Discordia? Kokopelli?

This time it was his job.

"Casey, if you've decided that you want to do something else with your life, I'm not here to stop you. If you want to go mountain climbing in Katmandu or become a war correspondent in the Middle East, fine." Dan was clutching the cup of coffee so hard he thought his fingerprints were becoming engraved in the ceramic glaze. "You spent far too many years being unhappy because you were in a bad situation and you wanted to do the best you could, and I can only honor you for it. I don't want you to be unhappy any more. I don't think anyone wants you to be unhappy."

The Charlie look was gone from Casey's face, and in its place Dan saw stillness, and a kind of grieving pain that Casey seldom showed. "So," Casey whispered. "There's more, isn't there."

"Yes." Dan said quietly. "I don't care if you leave _Sports Night_. I just don't want you to leave me. We've been partners for a long time, and I don't want that to end."

"Don't you think it would end if I was off climbing in Katmandu?"

"Not if I came with you."

"You don't even climb."

"I could learn," Dan whispered. "It's my turn."

Casey's eyes shut over what looked like tears. He put his hand up to his forehead to hide them. "Why?"

"The same reason you didn't take _Late Night_ a few years ago."

"But you'd be giving up your own national show."

Dan nodded. "I won't do it alone. Not because I can't, but because I don't want to." He let go of the cup and let his hand fall open on the table. The muscles felt tight around the bones. "I don't want to lose our partnership."

Casey leaned back in his chair, his head shaking. "I'd think you'd be glad if I left. You'd have your chance to solo. You're good, Dan. You're really good, and you deserve a chance to shine."

"Do you want me to spell it out, Case?"

"I'm tired, Dan. I need a break from all of it. I need some time to think."

"Then take a vacation."

"Why are you so stubborn about this?"

"Because I don't want to lose my best friend."

Casey blinked. "I've got to get out of here." He pushed the table aside, letting the coffee slosh on the badly folded newspaper. Dan dropped a tip on the table and followed him out of the coffee shop.

Casey seemed to be walking by remote control, mindlessly moving through the crowd, with Dan following half a pace behind in case Casey changed directions suddenly. Neither of them spoke until they were back inside the door at Casey's apartment. Casey leaned his back against the door, his arms hanging loose as if they helped to brace his shoulders against the difficulties of the world outside. Dan, who had gone a few steps into the room, walked back to stand in front of him.

Casey couldn't meet his eyes. "I thought I'd already lost you."

"No, Casey."

"In Cascade."

"Why?"

"You looked so happy with Blair."

Dan nodded. "Blair makes people happy. It's what he does."

"It's what you do, too," Casey whispered. "I came to work every day, all those years, because you kept me going when everything else in my life was falling apart."

Dan felt as if an invisible hand between his shoulder blades had just given him a solid push. He stepped closer to Casey and put his hands on the door on either side of him. "Then don't you think it's time you let me try to help you with some of the rest of it?"

Kissing Casey wasn't as difficult as Dan had expected. He'd anticipated a stiff-necked Casey pushing him off, which would have broken his heart, but this time Casey was miles away from his high horse. The moment Dan's lips brushed Casey's, Casey leaned forward and let his lower lip slip open just a little. He breathed softly into Dan's mouth and touched his tongue to Dan's lips shyly.

"Partners." Casey breathed.

"Any kind of partners you want."

Casey's arms came up to hold Dan, one around his shoulders and the other at his waist, and Dan let his worries fly out the window and kissed Casey back with all of his mixed emotions: frustration, worry, pain, anger, desire and the love that wove through it all.

Desire and tenderness won.

Casey's back straightened, pushing them away from the door. Without letting go of each other, or stopping the kiss, or even navigating much, they moved across the room, a step at a time, forward, backward, forward, backward. Dan found an image of Ginger Rogers crossing his mind, but shrugged it off; she never really got anywhere with Fred Astaire in the movies. This wasn't a movie.

For once, Casey hadn't made his bed. They fell into it, bounced slightly apart, kicked off their shoes in various directions, and rolled back into each other's arms. Dan turned his attention from Casey's lips to his long neck, let himself indulge in tasting every centimeter. Casey explored mathematics: how many buttons did he have to undo on Dan's shirt before it could be considered, topographically speaking, to be open and off him instead of enclosing him? After Dan's shirt and slacks were gone, and Casey's day-off sweater had been pushed up over his head -- exploration of Casey's lightly furred chest substituting for the investigation of his neck -- they stopped, suddenly, lying skin to skin from shoulder to toe on the cool blue plaid cotton sheets.

Casey's eyes were alight with happiness, but a trace of caution remained. "You're sure?"

Dan snorted. "I don't suppose I have to ask what you like to do."

"Are you sure?"

Dan rested his hand on Casey's face, feeling the strong bones and the faint brush of beard under his fingers. "Casey, Casey, Casey. You're a schmuck. You're an idiot. You're a dickhead," he said softly. "But you're my schmuck and idiot."

"Your dickhead too, if you want." Casey smiled and kissed Dan's fingers.

"You romantic, you. You say the nicest things."

They didn't come up for air for a while, not until they had to reach for the condom and lube in the bedside drawer. Dan trailed a strand of kisses and nibbles down Casey's spine as he slid, slowly and finally, home where he'd wanted to be for so long. "I should ... have done ... this ... years ... ago," he panted, between careful thrusts. Casey felt so tight around him that he couldn't just move; he had to slither, almost incrementally, inside that wet heat. It was fantastic.

"Oh, God, yes," Casey groaned.

"I'll ... have ... to ... remem ... ber this ... for the next ... time you ... get obstinate ... in a ... staff meeting."

Casey butted his head against the pillows they'd piled up so he wouldn't crack his skull on the headboard. "Yeah. Right over the table. Natalie can keep score. Just keep Dana out of the room; she'd probably want to smack me one."

"I won't let her." Dan pushed a little harder, a little deeper, and Casey's head surged up as he cried out. "Tell me what you want."

"You. More. Oh, God. Please." Casey's hips tilted fractionally, and suddenly they were out of the gate and increasing speed around the corner, racing down to the finish in triple time, ba-da-dum ba-da-dum, pounding down to double time at the wire, bum-pum bum-pum, hitting the wire and home, winners all the way, pounding, sweat dripping off them, with no sensation of being anything but one being.

Dan pulled out just long enough to dispose of the evidence, then collapsed next to Casey on the bed, with an arm over Casey's long back. Casey turned enough to put his arm around Dan and pull him in close. Dan was still feeling tingles up and down his spine, but the breath of air from the window made him pull up the sheets over the two of them.

"So," Dan said after a while. "Is it going to be Katmandu, then?"

Casey rolled onto his back, pulling Dan with him so that his head rested on Casey's shoulder. "I didn't want to stay at CSC if you didn't want me around."

"If you still think I don't want you, we've got a problem. Give me a little recovery time."

"I'd rather give you billing."

"Huh?"

"Don't you think _SportsWeek with Dan and Casey_ sounds good?"

***

"Two actual days off in a row? Simon's getting pretty mellow." Blair shook his head. "Not that I'm complaining. Whoa, did you see that? Told you the Knicks wouldn't win that one, Jim." He scooped a handful of popcorn out of the bowl that rested on the coffee table, juggled a few puffy kernels in his hand, tossed them in the air and ate them. When Jim tried to do the same, and failed because he was lying with his head on Blair's thigh instead of sitting up, Blair took pity on him and fed him a few.

"Mmm. Thanks. Can't win 'em all. Hey, wait a minute." Jim pushed the controller button to raise the volume. "What did he say?"

On the television, Casey McCall smiled and said, "That's right. Tune in Saturday afternoon for _SportsWeek with Dan and Casey_, where we give you a half-hour review of the best and brightest--"

"As well as the worst and gungiest -- " Dan Rydell cut in.

"And the silliest highlights of the week's sports." Casey raised an eyebrow. "Is gungiest a word?"

"It is now. You heard it here first. Tune in for _SportsWeek with Casey and Dan_. And if you're still awake in two hours, come on back for _West Coast Update_, where you get the best of the West, live from Seattle." Dan's smile looked incandescent.

"Aha." Jim nodded, his expression smug.

"Aha what?" Blair moved the popcorn bowl out of Jim's reach.

"Sally's moved to Seattle. That explains Simon."

"A happy Simon is a good thing." The popcorn bowl went back on the table, and several carefully chosen kernels were dropped into Jim's mouth.

"That's all for tonight. This is is Dan Rydell --"

"And Casey McCall --"

"Hoping that you're enjoying life wherever you are, because if you're not where you are, then where are you?" Dan grinned. "And we're sending special greetings to our friends in Cascade, Washington, wherever they are. Thanks, guys."

"Good night, everyone," Casey said. As the camera pulled back into a two-shot, the glowing look that flashed between the two anchormen could have shorted out a lighting board.


End file.
